When Ruth Bader Ginsburg—the trailblazing, firebrand liberal Supreme Court Justice—passed away last Friday night, the Republican Party reached a near-immediate public verdict: the hypocritical spectacle of American politics must roar ahead. No less than an hour and a half after the announcement of Ginsburg’s death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proceeded with half-baked remarks on Ginsburg’s life and record.

McConnell’s statement blared, “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” Never mind the stunning reversal of McConnell’s position from four years prior, where he embargoed President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland on the grounds of 2016, among other things, being an election year and about “principle”. Never mind the cold, politically calculated response to an American giant’s death with stunning immediacy. Never mind the impending election—September 18th, the day of Ginsburg’s passing, was 46 days from November 3rd. Conversely, McConnell stonewalled President Obama after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing 269 days prior to 2016’s general election.

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski surfaced as the lone Republicans to depart from McConnell’s tidy and rapid search for a Supreme Court confirmation, though Senator Collins of Maine confronts stiff political winds for reelection—her vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh appears to have bruised her polling, perhaps irrevocably. But others have calculated that the long-term reward of a soundly conservative Supreme Court outweighs the potential blowback to their personal electoral odds (and those of their party leader’s, Donald Trump). Senator Mitt Romney, the sole Republican who voted to remove President Trump in February, caved to political pressure on Tuesday, arguing that the nomination process must proceed based upon the rule of law.

Democrats have consistently cried foul and deplored the double standards of their political opponents. In reality, this is all the party can do. They are hamstrung by simple math—they have 49 votes against a new nominee, barring the unexpected (e.g., an incredibly damaging skeleton in the nominee’s closet). However, the Democratic Party holds an immensely powerful wild card—the American populace. Early polling suggests that McConnell’s proceedings are anywhere from unpopular to freezing cold among American voters. An Axios poll discovered that 62% of Americans prefer that the winner of the November election pick the newest justice. In the polarized domain of American politics, this should be a jarring alarm bell to Republican senators and could reflect an unforeseen shift toward the Democratic Party in both the presidential and down-ballot, highly contested senatorial elections.

The Republican Party faces an extraordinary political challenge if they decide to move forward with hearings and ultimately confirm a new justice: do they potentially risk a presidential election and a Senate majority for a long-standing Supreme Court advantage and major structural challenges to any future Democratic administration? Will they continue to function as a minority-rule party (President Trump lost the popular vote in 2016; millions more votes were cast for Democratic Senate candidates in 2018) hellbent on obstructing their slightly more popular political opponents? Or will they retreat, a maneuver which may be all for naught after their public commitments to confirm an unnamed nominee?

Furthermore, the institutional health of the United States government is at an unprecedented breaking point as compromise and integrity have vanished from the scene. The clear loser in the debate, of course, is the Supreme Court. Americans currently hold the Supreme Court at extraordinarily high levels—an approval advantage of 20%—where American confidence in the Court was at rock bottom just four years ago, at 10% in the red. This looks unlikely to persist, however, as the institution will likely discover itself in a partisan storm of hatred and unrestrained anger. An ostracized Supreme Court, along with the persistent dismay toward Congress and the almost certainty of a sharply divided stance on current and future administrations will signal a horrendous low point for mistrust and disgust regarding once-storied American institutions.

The American future is a grim one; the fervent wishes of a judicial giant will likely fall on deaf ears; the American people will once again ask themselves, why do we continue to go wrong?

With concern,

Carter Welch

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