Rehnquist Dead

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died last night after a year long battle with thyroid cancer. It is a sad time for the family and the nation yet this was not unexpected. Now the nation will have a unique situation where there are two vacancies at the same time. This has not happened since 1971 and this situation will surely generate a great deal of anger and obstructionist activity from the left. This is due to the fact that the left is no longer in power and they have been relying on the courts to legislate for them. With two vacancies they are worried the composition of the SCOTUS will change drastically and they might actually be right. The left slant the court has held for many years is likely to get a conservative face lift in relatively short order.

What does this mean? Well, the court has made rulings in the past that are very controversial. There is fear among the left that if these items are revisited by a conservative court the decisions might be reversed. Seems to me if the rulings were so legally sound the left should not have anything to worry about. Be that as it may we need to allow the President’s nominees to get an up or down vote and be done with it. Yet, it goes without saying that the nominees will be scrutinized at levels never before attempted and in direct conflict with methods the left has opposed in the past. Joe Biden, using his own words this time, has determined that Judge Roberts must answer all questions posed. In the past he advised Darth Bader-Ginsburg to refuse to answer questions and she was nonetheless confirmed.

Justice Rehnquist has not been laid to rest and the battle is beginning. The TV ads and attacks have been ongoing since the Roberts nomination but they will get progressively worse especially after the President nominates Rehnquist’s replacement. We will see obstruction at its best and democrats backtracking on their earlier positions regarding proper conduct of the confirmation process. We will have a long drawn out fight and the left will clearly be looking to derail the process. We need to ensure that the left understands two things very clearly. The first is that we will exercise the nuclear option for any filibuster that takes place. No playing around and no games. They filibuster and we exercise the option to take that toy away from them. If you can not play with the toys properly then you may not have the toys. We then need to make it clear that anyone who obstructed the process will be targeted in the next election and we need to stick to that. We need to ensure that people who did not exercise their jobs properly are replaced with others who will. If they do not like it then too bad. That is what happens when you are in the minority.

The Roberts nomination promised an interesting September. The death of Justice Rehnquist is going to make it a real circus.

Rehnquist story

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