The sudden passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice and feminist cultural icon, is leading to yet another contentious Supreme Court battle. As Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, gear up to prepare for a swift nomination, some voices on the right have been calling for restraint, and have embraced waiting until after the election to proceed with filling Ginsburg’s seat on the High Court. They’ve embraced “civility” and “fairness” as their rationale, seemingly not understanding that right now, there’s a lot more at stake.
Let’s take a look at the history of Supreme Court nominations in the modern era. The Democrats, over the past few decades, have thrown bipartisanship out the window when it comes to Republican nominees, beginning with Robert Bork’s controversial Senate hearings in 1987, when he was nominated by then-President Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court. Indeed, Bork was a conservative, originalist judge. But that’s not what Democrats attacked him for. Instead, they proceeded with an unprecedented character assassination to ensure that Bork would never sit on the Supreme Court bench. Then-Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy infamously claimed that with Bork on the Supreme Court, “blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters” and that “rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids.” Not a single word of these attacks were true, as demonstrated by Bork’s lengthy, prior judicial record. However, they nonetheless worked and the Senate voted against confirming him, with 42 Senators voting for his appointment and 58 voting against.
Robert Bork’s treatment by Senate Democrats became so infamous that it now has its own verb: “borking.” After Bork, Democrats would proceed to use this tactic against other Republican appointees, notably Clarence Thomas in 1991 and then Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. But this isn’t the only tactic in the Democratic judicial playbook. Democrats have consistently shown that they’re willing to play as dirty as necessary to tilt the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court in their favor. Consider then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to use the nuclear option for federal court nominees in 2013. Prior to this event, a 60-vote threshold was needed invoke cloture and confirm federal judges in the Senate. But Senate Democrats, unconcerned with Senate precedent and tradition, decided to do away with this rule so that they could confirm federal judges with merely 51 votes, a simple majority.
From these actions, it’s crystal clear that Democrats go gloves-off when it comes to judiciary battles. Republicans, however, shouldn’t be angry. It’s just politics. It’s just how the game is played. But if the Democrats have shown that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to win, Republicans must not be afraid to get their hands dirty to do the same. Yes, the same Republicans who refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing in 2016 promised to not confirm a Supreme Court justice if an opening came up in a Republican President’s election year. But this is politics. Promises aren’t always kept. And if we consider the one most contentious judicial battle that transpired between 2016 and now, it should be clear that we have no obligation in 2020 to keep that promise. And that battle was the one for Brett Kavanaugh.
In the Kavanaugh hearings, the Democrats revealed their true colors, uglier than they’d ever been seen prior. They demonstrated to the Senate and to the country that they had no issue with dragging an innocent man’s name, reputation, and family through the mud, simply in the name of politics. Whether Kavanaugh was really innocent or not never mattered to them. All they wanted was to keep him off the bench, collateral damage be damned. They didn’t succeed, but this one hearing alone showed how Democrats were, and still are, willing to do literally anything to get the judiciary that they want. And in doing so, they acknowledged that when it comes to Justices, the ends justify the means. Today, we must make them realize that it works both ways.
Republicans who still oppose filling Ginsburg’s seat should keep three simple words in mind: Remember Brett Kavanaugh. We must never forget what they did to that man, what they were willing to do to someone with a perfectly clean record throughout his entire professional life, someone who was unanimously rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association, someone who was spoken of highly by virtually every single person, male and female, who’d ever clerked for him or worked with him. Just for the stunt the Democrats pulled at the Kavanaugh hearings alone, we owe them nothing. Not compromise, not mercy, not kept promises. This time, the tables have turned, and the Democrats are on the other side. Therefore, in this moment, we must have only one goal in sight: win at any cost necessary.
And win we will. With swing vote Sen. Romney on board, along with most other Republican Senators, we have the votes we need to confirm a Justice prior to the 2020 Election. We finally have the opportunity to gain a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court, one that will abide by originalism and judicial restraint, and determine the direction of this nation for decades to come. Given the gravity of this opportunity, we must not be mired by concerns of fairness, especially considering the Democrats’ history of blatant unfairness in judicial proceedings. And so, President Trump and Senator McConnell, fill. That. Seat.
