GOP pushes back on Senate Democrats acting like goodfellas


GOP pushes back on Senate Democrats acting like goodfellas

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was absolutely right today to say that some of his Democratic colleagues are playing “mobster politics” with the Supreme Court.

Sasse’s comment came as he joined the release of a well-worded letter from all 53 Senate Republicans to the clerk of the Supreme Court, urging the court not to be intimidated by very thinly veiled political threats made by five Democratic senators. In an official friend-of-the-court brief on a pending gun control case, those five had written the following:

“The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.”

As the Republican senators accurately characterized it, “The implication is as plain as day: Dismiss this case, or we’ll pack the Court.” Put another way, the same Democrats who for years have tried to politicize the courts are now threatening political retribution because they’re momentarily losing the battle.

What the Democrats really are threatening to do is to “pack” the Supreme Court by raising its size from nine justices to 13 or 15 if a Democrat takes the White House. This is not just hardball politics but a full-on abuse of power. The last time any president proposed this was Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. The public reaction against him was fierce.

Despite coming off a landslide reelection victory, 523 electoral votes to 8, Roosevelt couldn’t convince Congress to pack the court. By a 70-20 vote, the Senate shot down the proposal, and in 1938, Roosevelt’s Democratic Party suffered a backlash of monumental proportions, losing a net 72 House seats and seven Senate seats.

Yet, today’s Democrats want to reprise Roosevelt’s terrible idea. As the Republican senators wrote, what this means is that “judicial independence is under assault … It’s one thing for politicians to peddle these ideas in Tweets or on the stump. But the Democrats’ amicus brief demonstrates that their court-packing plans are more than mere pandering. They are a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary and the rights of all Americans.”

Or, again, as Sasse put it, “this is mobster politics.”

These five Democrats’ own Senate leaders should rebuke them. Even stalwart liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has argued against court packing, saying emphatically that “nine seems to be a good number” for the court’s duties. If Democrats want to implement their policies, they should try winning elections fair and square instead of abusing power. Don Corleone has no place in the Senate or on the Supreme Court.




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