As we have said elsewhere, it’s impossible to keep the presidency from being a political volley ball. So much depends on what the President chooses to push. Likewise, Congress is necessarily a political body. But is it really necessary to continue to have a political Supreme Court? We had suggested that the judicial committee might recommend nominees for the President to choose from.
Now, Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller has come up with a wild suggestion: Republicans should surrender IF Hillary Clinton promises them one Supreme Court nomination.
It’s time for Republican leaders to consider a negotiated endorsement of Hillary Clinton. . .Why do Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans continue to allow Trump to sap their dignity, especially as it becomes increasingly clear he is going to lose? And even if he did win, what would there be to celebrate? Trump stands against so much of what conservatives have been fighting for since Ronald Reagan.
“What if Hillary offered Republicans one SCOTUS pick? Would that open the floodgates for skeptical Republicans to rescind support for Trump?”. . . Why not go one step further? . . .top Republican and conservative leaders should band together and offer Hillary a deal to rescind their endorsements of Trump and endorse her in exchange for some policy concessions. . .
In exchange for an endorsement, Hillary might promise Republicans the right to choose whom she nominates to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. She should also be pushed to agree to some entitlement reform, perhaps in the form of Simpson-Bowles (not the best fix to our entitlement crisis, but better than anything Republicans can hope for when even the Republican presidential nominee rejects the need for entitlement reform). Maybe Republicans could even get her to commit to putting together a bi-partisan (or non-partisan) national security team to include widely respected figures like former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and retired Gen. James Mattis.
. . . there are a couple reasons why Clinton might be inclined to come to an agreement. For starters, while Trump looks like he is tanking, you can never be so sure. A deal would make it more likely Hillary wins the White House, something she cares more about than any policy initiative.
Beyond that, a deal could be good for Hillary’s presidential legacy. If she can enlist Republican support in achieving some of her big policy goals before she is sworn in, why not take it?
There’s interesting logic there. If Hillary is likely to win, anyway, why not make a deal in advance? That way, the GOP can get at least some of what it wants. After all, when Hillary was in the Senate, she was quite well liked by her colleagues—on both sides of the aisle.
As a matter of fact, many conservatives have said it might be worse for the conservative movement if Trump wins. Just look at National Review.
Donald Trump has completed the gutting of a principled Republican party that began in the Bush years. . .Trump’s speech was a paean to centralized power — which, personified by Trump, would become larger-than-life government. As sloganeering, “Make America Great Again” may not be quite as bold as Obama’s “hope and change,” which was to have healed the earth and lowered the sea levels by now. But Trump vows to end ISIS, violent crime, illegal immigration, bad trade deals, and (of course) wasteful government spending — all, evidently, in the first days of his administration. He will do all this and more by flexing Leviathan’s muscles.
If you were waiting for Trump to champion individual liberty and limits on state power, you waited in vain — except for a couple of throw-away lines about preserving the Second Amendment and free-speech rights . . . which were impressive only if you were unfamiliar with Trump’s history of support for President Clinton’s ban on “assault weapons” and for looser libel laws that would make it easier for him to sue his legions of detractors. . .
Take away the conservatism, the limited-government constitutionalism, the devotion to liberty, the fiscal discipline, the clear-eyed recognition of America’s enemies, and what are you left with? A Republican party whose only real boast is that it can do statism with more adult moderation than the hard Left that has captured the Democratic party. . .
Whoever wins, I know that come January, I will be in the conservative opposition to a statist administration, and in search of a new party to call home.
OK, so we have the National Review saying that Trump is not a true conservative, so no matter who wins, conservatives lose. That’s why Weekly Standard Editor Kristol made such a fool of himself trying to find a “true conservative” to run against Trump. Also, as the many attempts have shown, you can’t make Donald Trump be anyting but Donald Trump, no matter how many speeches you write for him, how many teleprompters you stick in front of his face, or how many threats you make. He’s a loose cannon. That’s why the Daily Caller says conservatives should “stick with the devil we know.”
Whatever you say about Hillary Clinton, she’s a pragmatist, not an ideologue. In the senate, she made deals and negotiated compromises. Like her husband, she’s likely to take credit for conservative ideas—but maybe those ideas are more likely to pass with her than with Trump.
But I would not go for a wholesale surrender of the Republican Party. Let the candidates slug it out, and let the chips fall where they may. The Supreme Court is the one reason most people are willing to hold their nose and vote for Hillary or The Donald. Why not negotiate a permanent Supreme Court deal, instead? Get both parties and candidates to agree to a new system which would have four liberal members, four conservative members, and one moderate—who must be agreeable to both sides, equally.
If a conservative justice dies or resigns, he or she must be replaced with a conservative, regardless of who is president. The same would go for liberals. And we’re at the perfect point to start it. Replace Scalia with a moderate, agreeable to both sides, giving us a 4-4-1 court, and we might actually end up with something that could more likely pass for justice.
And we could all vote for Johnson, Green, or McMullen, and not worry about “consequences.”
