Following Senate confirmation Saturday of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court, we shouldn’t underestimate the fury of the left now that their destructive and divisive effort to retain power has been thwarted.
The Supreme Court has swung away from the judicial activism that Democrats have relied on for decades to deliver key elements of their political agenda, and they’re not going to accept this defeat gracefully.
Helpfully, the left’s intentions are clear for all to see.
One of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aides, Brian Fallon, told us what Plan A was: delay the Kavanaugh confirmation until after the Nov. 6 midterm elections; take back the Senate in the midterms; and refuse to confirm any Trump appointee for the next two years.
This would hold retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat open until after the 2020 presidential election. Which of course Fallon believes will be won by a Democrat.
Well, that plan failed – in large part due to its own hate-filled extremism. Once Stormy Daniels’ lawyer (and possible Democratic presidential candidate) Michael Avenatti got in on the act with his ludicrous but still deeply offensive nonsense about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged involvement in drugging women to facilitate gang rape, Republicans across the country (and most importantly in the Senate) firmed up in their determination to confirm President Trump’s nominee.
Alongside Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Avenatti should take a bow for his role in helping Kavanaugh win Senate confirmation.
Within minutes of Kavanaugh being sworn in as a Supreme Court justice Saturday, the contours of the next phase of “resistance” became clear.
“November is Coming!” protesters chanted on the steps of the Supreme Court, confident that Democrats will retake the House of Representatives and begin impeachment proceedings against Justice Kavanaugh.
On what grounds, you ask? Who cares – he’s Trump’s appointee so of course he must be impeached! The only real question is whether the Kavanaugh impeachment should come before the Trump impeachment. Until a couple of weeks ago, impeaching the president was on the top of the left-wing activists’ to-do list.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews accurately captured the mood on the left when he said: “This is the time for vengeance for what happened two years ago."
But even the most fervent believers in a Democratic blue wave would concede that the Democrats winning a two-thirds majority in the Senate in November – the margin required to actually remove either President Trump or Justice Kavanaugh from office – is mathematically impossible.
Even if Democrats win every Senate race on the ballot in November – something extraordinarily unlikely – they could at the very most win 57 Senate seats. They would need 67 votes in the Senate to impeach.
Impeachment is just the prelude to the real Plan B: packing the Supreme Court.
Here’s the idea: the Democrats win back the White House in 2020 and, based on the constitutionally spurious but politically expedient talking point that the Supreme Court is made up of a near-majority of justices appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote (and confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans), the newly elected Democratic president immediately nominates two liberal justices, thereby bringing the court, as liberals say, “in line with” the views of the nation as a whole. This would increase the number of justices on the court to 11.
Put aside the fact that this entire line of reasoning totally misunderstands the point of the Supreme Court, which is to interpret the law and not make it. The notion of the high court pursuing a political agenda of any kind, in any direction, is itself a left-wing idea.
And try to stifle, if you can, the ribald laughter that such a plan would evoke, given that its advocates are constantly lecturing everyone about “authoritarianism,” threats to “democratic norms” and all the rest of it. And that these same sanctimonious leftists who want to pack the court to pursue their political ends in America are simultaneously in uproar over alleged assaults on the judiciary by populist leaders in Eastern Europe.
However outlandish it may sound, the Democrats packing the Supreme Court is a plan we should all take seriously. The activists will demand it; the donors will back it; liberal opinion leaders are already debating it.
In fact one of them will be debating me and my guests Tammy Bruce, Lisa Boothe and Charlie Kirk about it on “The Next Revolution” this Sunday night at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox News Channel.
Just like “Abolish ICE” lurched in a matter of months from lunatic fringe to party orthodoxy, I predict the Democratic plan to pack the Supreme Court is going to become a mainstream position before long – and a key litmus test for 2020 presidential candidates.
Of course this is simply evidence of the Democrats’ desperation, on a par with their plan – now endorsed by Hillary Clinton – to try and abolish the Electoral College for presidential elections. When they can’t win the game, they just try to change the rules.
But that doesn’t mean we should just dismiss it. MSNBC host Chris Matthews accurately captured the mood on the left when he said: “This is the time for vengeance for what happened two years ago."
Exactly. All the more reason for Republicans to get out there and fight. Those on the left have been organizing and mobilizing. Give them power again, and they will change America forever. After the Kavanaugh confirmation, the stakes are – pardon the pun – supremely high.
Get the recap of top opinion commentary and original content throughout the week.