Failing to prevent Judge Kavanaugh from being confirmed to the Supreme Court came as a devastating blow to the Democratic Party. For the first time in decades, conservatives will have a reliable majority on the highest court in the nation.
It’s a majority that will serve as an invaluable check against government overreach for years to come, a majority that will protect rights such as gun ownership and the freedom of religion, and a majority that may even allow conservatives finally start limiting – if not eliminating – the murder of unborn children.
Of course, all of these realities create nothing short of a doomsday scenario for the Democratic Party – and they may be willing to go to drastic lengths to keep it from happening.
The lengths that the Democratic Party went to in an effort to try and stop the Supreme Court from shifting conservative have already been pretty drastic. By running an unmerciful and unfounded smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats have forever tarnished the Senate’s role of advise and consent in confirming Supreme Court nominees.
One of the most important roles in American government has taken a serious hit thanks to their actions. However, Democrats are now under pressure from their base to destroy another institution of the government in an even more serious way.
Unable to accept the ramifications of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will likely last for decades, liberal media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are now urging Democrats to use the nuclear option if they take control of Congress and the White House in 2020 – packing the Supreme Court.
Packing the Supreme Court refers to changing the number of justices that make it up. There’s nothing in the Constitution that requires there to be nine justices on the Supreme Court, or any specific number of justices for that matter. However, decades of precedent and respect for the procedures of American government dictates that nine is the appropriate number. Of course, don’t be surprised if Democrats are willing to cast all of this aside in order to neutralize the conservative majority.
Packing the Supreme Court would allow the next Democratic President to add as many liberal justices to the court as he or she pleased. Adding six new justices to bring the total up to fifteen and give liberals a ten to five majority seems to be the most common recommendation among liberal outlets calling for Democrats to pack the Court.
The irony is that if Democrats did follow through with this strategy, there would be nothing stopping the next Republican President and Congress from doubling the number of justices on the Supreme Court once again, creating a vicious cycle where the number of justices is constantly increasing every four years. As damaging as this process would be to one of the most important institutions in our country, it’s a measure that many liberal outlets are calling for.
According to the Washington Post, “There should now be no squeamishness about the urgency of enlarging the Supreme Court if Democrats have the power to do so after the 2020 elections. The current majority on the court was created through illegitimate means. Changing that majority would not constitute politicizing the court because conservatives have already done this without apology.”
By “illegitimate means”, we can only assume that the author of this nonsense is referring to President Trump fulfilling his Constitutional obligation to appoint justices to the Supreme Court and the Republican majority Senate fulfilling their Constitutional obligation to either confirm or reject those justices – confirming them both times in the case of the justices that Trump appointed.
There is absolutely nothing illegitimate about the way conservatives secured a majority on the Supreme Court – they won elections, were given power by the American people, and used that power to do the job the people voted them in to do in the standard, Constitutionally-supported manner.
Likewise, Republicans are no more guilty of “politicizing the court” when they nominate conservative justices such as Kavanaugh and Gorsuch than Democrats are when they nominate liberal justices such as Ginsburg and Sotomayor.
If, however, Democrats decide to pack the court, they would very much so be guilty of politicizing the court through illegitimate means. It’s a move that the Supreme Court as we know it could not survive, creating yet another foundation of American life and government that will have fallen victim to the modern left.
