Why would Christian
conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy
Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against
him?
Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v.
Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.
Republicans now hold 52 Senate seats. If Democrats pick up the
Alabama seat, they need only two more to recapture the Senate, and with it the
power to kill any conservative court nominee, as they killed Robert Bork.
Today, the GOP, holding Congress and the White House, has a
narrow path to capture the Third Branch, the Supreme Court, and to dominate the
federal courts for a decade. For this historic opportunity, the party can thank
two senators, one retired, the other still sitting.
The first is former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of
Nevada.
In 2013, Harry exercised the “nuclear option,” abolishing the
filibuster for President Obama’s judicial nominees. The Senate no longer needed
60 votes to confirm judges. Fifty-one Senate votes could cut off debate, and
confirm.
Iowa’s Chuck Grassley warned Harry against stripping the
minority of its filibuster power. Such a move may come back to bite you, he
told Harry. Grassley is now judiciary committee chairman.
And this year a GOP Senate voted to use the nuclear option to
shut down a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who was then
confirmed with 55 votes.
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Yet the Democratic minority still had one card to play to block
President Trump’s nominees — the “blue slip courtesy.”
If a senator from the state where a federal judicial nominee
resides asks for a hold on proceedings, by not returning a blue slip, the
judiciary committee has traditionally honored that request and not held
hearings.
Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota used the blue slip to block the
Trump nomination of David Stras of Minnesota to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals. Franken calls Stras too ideological, too conservative.
But Grassley has now decided to reject the blue slip courtesy
for appellate court judges, since their jurisdiction is not just over a single
state like Minnesota, but over an entire region.
Thus have the skids been greased for a conservative recapture of
the federal judiciary unseen since the early days of FDR.
Eighteen of the 179 seats on the U.S. appellate courts and 119
of the 677 seats on federal district courts are already open. More will be
opening up. No president in decades has seen the opportunity Trump has to
remake the federal judiciary.
Not only are the federal court vacancies almost unprecedented, a
GOP Senate and Trump are working in harness to fill them before January 2019,
when a new Congress is sworn in.
If Republicans blow this opportunity, it is unlikely to come
again. For the Supreme Court has seemed within Republican grasp before, only to
have it slip away because of presidential errors.
Nixon had four nominees to the Supreme Court confirmed and
Gerald Ford saw his nominee, John Paul Stevens, unanimously confirmed. But of
those five justices confirmed from 1969 to 1976, Stevens and Harry Blackmun
joined the liberal bloc, and Chief Justice Warren Burger and Lewis Powell voted
for Roe v. Wade.
Of Reagan’s three Supreme Court nominees confirmed, Sandra Day
O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy cast crucial votes in 5-4 decisions to defeat the
strict constructionists led by Antonin Scalia.
George H.W. Bush named Clarence Thomas to the court, but only
after he had elevated David Souter, who also joined the liberal bloc.
Hence, both Trump, by whom he nominates, and a Republican
Senate, with its power to confirm with 51 votes, are indispensable if we are to
end judicial dictatorship in America.
And 2018 is the crucial year.
While Democrats, with 25 Senate seats at risk, would seem to be
facing more certain losses than the GOP, with one-third as many seats at stake,
history teaches that the first off-year election of Trump could prove a
disaster.
Consider. Though Ike ended the Korean War in his first year, he
lost both Houses of Congress in his second. Reagan enacted one of the great tax
cuts in history in his first year, and then lost 26 seats in the House in his
second.
Bill Clinton lost control of both the House and Senate in his
first off-year election. Barack Obama in 2010 lost six Senate seats and 54
seats and control of the House. And both presidents were more popular than
Trump is today.
If the election in Virginia this year is a harbinger of what is
to come, GOP control of Congress could be washed away in a tidal wave in 2018.
Hence, this coming year may be a do-or-die year to recapture the
Third Branch of Government for conservatism.
Which is why that Dec. 12 election in Alabama counts.
