As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers, the Left courts disasterby Noemie Emery
January 22, 2019
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems by all counts a nice human being: a good wife and mother, a good friend to her opposite, late Justice Antonin Scalia, a very hard worker, in all ways a mensch.
But this isn’t the reason that millions of liberals follow her health with concern, pray every day for her continued survival, and even write in with the offer of one of their kidneys, should the need arise. The concern for her health above that of all others rises, of course, from one special reason: If she dies or retires while Republicans hold the White House and Senate, it would leave the liberals on the Supreme Court on the short end of a six-to-three minority. This would be a huge blow to the pro-abortion agenda that has reigned in the U.S. for the last 40 years.
The blame for their panic is wholly their own. In 1972, when Roe v. Wade was decided in a 7-2 decision, the Court thought it spoke for an emerging consensus, part of a rights-centered wave that swept all before it, against morals and mores. The wave, they believed, traveled only one way.
But in this instance, it failed to occur. A pro-life movement arose to contest it, and 60 percent of the country refused to choose either side, settling on a reluctant "OK" in the first stage of pregnancy, followed thereafter by heavy restrictions and an absolute ban near the end.
As their drive slowed, the Left turned to the courts to deliver their triumphs, and the conservatives followed their lead. By the late 1980s, with Ronald Reagan ensconced as the first pro-life president and the abortion-rights movement an arm of the Democrats, the moment occurred that changed the Senate forever. Reagan named conservative Judge Robert Bork to fill the seat of retiring Justice Lewis Powell, a pro-choice adherent.
Sen. Ted Kennedy dashed to the floor of the Senate and delivered a fierce and alarmist anti-Bork diatribe that stripped the paint from the walls. As Steven F. Hayward assures us, "Bork’s was not the first nomination to fail for political reasons, but the demagogic nature of the campaign against him made it a watershed moment in American politics, permanently deforming the nomination process for the judiciary, with ideological battles extending to the lower courts as well."
We were all better off when abortion was a matter of conscience, not politics, and both parties had healthy pro-life and pro-choice factions. But those days were over, and the new ways have risks. One is that presidential elections are won on war-and-peace and/or pocketbook issues. Either side could lose everything for reasons not of its own doing. There is also no guarantee as to how many justices a president can appoint.
In 2016, both of these traps snapped shut on the Democrats' legs. First, Trump, who lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, won the electoral vote by a sizable margin. Second, he got to name two new justices in his first two years in office, with two of the Democrats’ remaining four justices, Ginsburg included, aged 85 or older. Seldom has expedience backfired so neatly on those who contrived it.
I wish Ginsburg well, but the Left gets no mercy, having chosen its own poison so well.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/as-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-recovers-the-left-courts-disaster
