In 2016, Senate Republicans denied a sitting President of the United States his constitutionally authorized and mandated power to nominate the replacement for an open Supreme Court vacancy. If they had continued to adhere to their 2016 “election year” rationale for doing so and applied it equally to the appointment they just rammed through, it would have set a legitimate precedent; maybe even an arguably good one. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they flipped 180 degrees as soon as it was in their party’s interest to do so.
Their recent actions have spectacularly repudiated that rationale, and that repudiation clearly reveals that the entire justification was just an insincere and nakedly dishonest farce to begin with. And that, in turn, ultimately means that the GOP successfully completed a plot to steal a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016. Not by a clever legislative ploy that simply outplayed the opposition, but by a premeditated plot to steal another branch’s constitutional power. They did this to stack the court with fervid champions of their own ideology. Another word for that is “packing.”
So Mr. Davis' recent blustering, partisan outrage in his op-ed was pretty rich, given his deeply hypocritical blindness to his own party’s outright assault on democracy, an assault in which he actively participated. Might does not make right. If we want to protect the Constitution from being disregarded by whatever party happens to hold the reins of power at any given time (and that’s what we’ve witnessed), we can’t allow the perpetrators of this opportunistic and amoral subversion of our system to be rewarded with the additional political power they have so blatantly stolen. There has to be repercussions. If Dr. Al Gross is elected, along with a Joe Biden presidency and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, I for one want to see them all immediately and forcefully correct these corrupt actions by Mitch McConnell, his Senate minions, and President Donald Trump. The only way to do that in a way that’s both constitutional and effective is to create two new Supreme Court justice seats to be filled by the new administration (two being necessary to maintain an odd number of justices).
It’s frankly very distressing to me to hear Joe Biden distance himself from doing that very thing if he’s elected. Adding two new justices under a Democratic President is not only justified in this case, it’s absolutely necessary. It would justly and appropriately correct for the GOP’s overt attack on our governmental system, while still leaving a conservative majority on the court. That’s not “packing” the court by anybody’s definition.
I hope Dr. Gross wins, and that he aggressively fights to make that correction happen.
Kenneth Higgins
Anchorage
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