Blake Shuart: Supreme Court junkyard brawls destroy our system
It has now been just over 233 years since 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the U.S. Constitution following four long months of debate. Among the 55 “Framers” at the Convention were lawyers, judges, merchants, bankers, physicians, farmers and ministers. Many of these men had fought in the American Revolution for the right to sign the document before them — their battle scars were real; not figurative.
What these men understood then is that society would change in unimaginable ways over the centuries to follow. The political winds would howl across the land, in from the coasts and across the plains as our economy fluctuated, our beliefs evolved, and our friends and enemies changed to protect our destiny as a global force. While they understood the politics of the moment, their focus was the unpredictability of a world they would never know. And with this understanding, they worked painstakingly to calibrate a delicate system of checks and balances as the foundation of our government — one that could sustain even the most turbulent gusts at our weakest moments.
The Framers, insecure as they were at the time, had nailed one fundamental truth: If we could sustain it, our system would bring us prosperity. And it has. Our form of government is infallible, even when are our leaders are not.
But now, for the first time, our beliefs have become so stubbornly polarized that we have turned on the system as it unravels before us. As a population, we’ve done so through acquiescence; rooting our chosen party’s power brokers on as they pervert our system to achieve some temporary end.
There was never any doubt our president and our Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate would act immediately in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s death to unwind their “let the people decide” mantra from 2016 and posture for the swift confirmation of a replacement justice. Their lust for the prize — a 6-3 Supreme Court majority and the transformative laws to follow — was far too strong to be thwarted by notions of consistency or fairness. And in 2016, when the Constitution authorized then-President Obama to select a successor for Justice Scalia with the advice and consent of the Republican Senate, their lust for delay was no less.
In response to clear-eyed questioning about the merits of their turnabout, Republican Senators have justified their intentions by reasserting them: Swift confirmation is fair and just because it’s going to happen.
And who can doubt, when confronted with a likely 3-6 minority, that Senate Democrats will upend the system in any number of ways by weaponizing impeachment or packing the Court. “Nothing is off the table,” announced Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — the perils of tit-for-tat politics long forgotten.
This is just our politicians’ latest act of unraveling the system in a bare-knuckled fight over Supreme Court politics. Before Justice Ginsburg’s replacement, there was Justice Kavanaugh and the most blasphemous confirmation hearing in the Court’s history. The president’s right to appoint is inviolate and implicates the importance of a presidential election, but the process of Supreme Court confirmation has become a multi-branch political junkyard brawl.
As difficult as it may be with stakes this high, it is the obligation of the people to preserve our system of government by voting down those who would destroy it for the sake of temporary power. If this is really business as usual, we won’t be in business for long.