Laughable Hypocrisy

NBC News photo

Brett Kavanaugh, president Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, has started making his courtesy calls on Republican senators (and, if he's smart, he'll call on some Democrats as well).

At the same time, lines are being drawn; full force and passion is being invoked by the likes of Chuck Schumer; studious review of Kavanaugh's lengthy record is being promised and people are being recruited for that effort.All that's pretty normal, except for the Deputy AG's request for help on the documents. 

Also normal is the left and right chest thumping, about how long the confirmation process should take, about the Merrick Garland nonconfirmation, and more.this. In short, we're headed for a battle and the ultimate winner will almost certainly be the president and his nominee, who will join Great Justice Neil Gorsuch on the bench.

Speaking of Great Things, here's a Great and Laughably Hypocritical Example of the what the folks on the right have to offer about this new SCOTUS battle. In an opinion published in the conservative Washington Examiner, we read that

As liberal fury over Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement continues to escalate, there's a clear mindset behind the Left's opposition tactics. "If we stop winning, we want to immediately change the rules."  In the week after Kennedy's retirement was announces, some Democrats have revived their calls to 'court pack' - increase the number of seats on the Supreme Court and fill those seats with justices sympathetic to their social agenda. 

Hmm.. "some Democrats"... I wonder who that is? Could it be Schumer? Dick Durbin? Patty Murray? Maybe Elizabeth Warren? Amy Klobuchar?  Nah, it's this guy: Ian Samuel.

Samuel, among other things, is a former clerk for Supreme Antonin Scalia (yes, you read that correctly). He is, by his own admission, a card-carrying socialist. You can watch the interview Samuel did with a laughing Tucker Carlson in the link above from the Washington Examiner to learn what "some Democrats" think. (Full disclosure: I laughed at some of it, too.)

Back to the article. The author notes that Dems don't even try to pretend there's a lofty goal here.

They aren’t even trying to hide that their agenda is simply focused on stopping conservatives rather than playing fairly and genuinely arguing policy... The Democrats’ rhetoric is a classic tactic to continue to move the goal posts and basically gerrymander favorability for one side.

Um, really? A politician acting simply to stop the other side? And using the  'gerrymander' term to describe this type of activity? Say it ain't so!

Oh wait, we can't say it ain't so, can we? Because this happened, and not so long ago, either.

After Democrats held together Thursday morning and filibustered president Trump's nominee, Republicans voted to lower the threshold for advancing Supreme Court nominations from 60 votes to a simple majority. 

Republicans changed the rules, after they lost. That's what that statement says.

In deploying this so-called nuclear option, lawmakers are fundamentally altering the way the Senate handles one of its most significant duties, further limiting the minority's power in a chamber that was designed to be a slower and more deliberative body than the House.

This move, once unthinkable among senators, is a testament to the creeping bipartisan rancor in recent years, after decades of at least relative bipartisanship on Supreme Court matters...

And before that, this happened: Mitch McConnell denied our duly elected president the opportunity to fulfill the duties of his office by refusing to allow Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to even come to the Senate floor. He did this, McConnell explained, because President Obama was a lame duck president, he said, and the people's voice needed to be heard.

Now, that's just applicable when we have a lame duck president; it doesn't apply when we have four lame duck Republican senators and it's a midterm election year, and certainly not when the Senate's Republican majority is 51 - 49 and when one of those 51, Arizona's John McCain, is not participating.

That stuff absolutely does not come into play at all. Because no Republican would ever do anything simply to advance their own agenda, certainly not Mitch McConnell.

I did find another reference to court packing, this time in Jacobin, "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives..." and so again, "some Socialist" who don't represent any voters or the views of most of the Democratic party, has an opinion on court packing.

Here's what we learn from the Jacobin article.

With Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump's Muslim ban, Wednesday's decision attacking public sector unions, and Justice Anthony Kennedy's announcement that he's retiring, it's time to push a once-maligned idea to the top of the agenda: pack the Supreme Court... 

Today, such ideas smell toxic to the average Democratic elected official - recall Al Gore's surrender following Bush v. Gore in 2000, despite later evidence that he was the rightful winner of that election. But such deference wasn't always the norm... 

Interesting. "Today, such ideas smell toxic to the average Democratic elected official" is a true statement - which is why it's kind of silly to suggest this is something that mainstream Dems support.

Even Bernie Sanders, the Independent-democratic socialist, the fake Democrat who just wanted to steal the party's money, data and spotlight, doesn't appear to be supporting court-packing. Speaking about Kavanaugh's nomination, he never mentioned it.

This is political. If you're concerned about health care, the environment, you need to understand that the majority of this Supreme Court is about working for the wealthy and the powerful against the needs of ordinary Americans. 

Sanders noted, focusing on how the Republicans got to this point, that people are going to become even more detached from the 'jousting' that goes on in these nomination battles.

The point now is to make people understand the real-life consequences of these decisions. I think if you frame it like that, you will be successful.

That's a significant uphill battle for Sanders, and for real Democrats, too. And what's also a significant uphill battle is fighting against the hypocrisy that flows so freely from both sides of every conversation. Neither party, neither side, has the high ground on this -- it's a tie in a race to the bottom. 

If we can frame it like that - that falling for this type of stuff has real-life consequences, and that it's not just bad actors from Russia and China and North Korea but our own homegrown talking heads and 'experts' maybe we'll be successful at turning the tide against all of the of the nonsense.