Republicans pleading nolo contedere on social issues

The Achilles heel of the modern Republican Party is its unending attempts to avoid addressing all but the most pressing social issues in favor of a focus on abstract economic issues. The party still invokes the name of Ronald Reagan, but it has knocked off the third leg of the Reagan stool, which is one of the reasons it keeps tipping over.

Reagan emphasized three things: Smaller government, a strong national defense, and traditional values. Since the Reagan administration, Republicans haven't particularly distinguished themselves in any of these, but they at least give lip service to the first two. The third has been largely eliminated from their agenda.

The most egregious example of this tendency was in the 2012 election when Mitt Romney, the poster child for this type of Republican, would try to change the subject every time a social issue was mentioned. Abortion? Change the subject to economics. Marriage? Change the subject to economics.

If you want a good example of this, you can look at how the party is now responding to the same-sex marriage issue that has reasserted itself since the Dobbs decision. Republican senators are either voting in favor the so-called "Respect for Marriage Act," or remaining mum about it altogether. The "Respect for Marriage Act" (I call attention to the quotation marks) would basically enshrine same-sex marriage in federal law.

What can you say about a supposedly conservative party that cannot trouble itself to defend basic conservative institutions like marriage? In fact, some have pointed out that, if you can't defend the traditional view of marriage, there is little traditional you can be expected to defend.

The party notoriously bailed on the marriage issue when it really would have mattered in the two years leading up to the 2014 Obergefell decision. And now their reprising their cowardly performance of eight years ago.

When asked what their positions are on the "Respect for Marriage Act," they respond, in frightened tones, "I haven't read the bill." Haven't read the bill? Since when did that ever stop a lawmaker from voting for or against anything? I doubt if any lawmaker reads any bill he votes for, including the ones he has supposedly written.

This is why Republicans lose--because they deny what Democrats know all too well: that social issues provide the gut-level motivation for their voters to go to the polls. Economic issues only work when there is an economic crisis that the reigning party can't fix. We have one of those now of course, so Republicans will pick up seats in the midterms even as they avoid issues of the heart. But when the economy improves, they will need social issues to motivate their voters, and they will choose, once again to avoid them.

World without end, amen.

It's time for the Republicans to show what they're made of

As I write this, another accuser has come forth accusing Kavanaugh of sexual impropriety. This one from college. Like the Ford charge, there are manifold problems, among them the lack of corroboration. They are charges that would have no force in a court of law and the Ramirez charge shouldn't even have been published by the normal standards of journalism (or at least the ones that used to be normal until ideology completely consumed ethical considerations among America's left-wing media).

In fact, there was a reason several other major mainstream news sources passed on the Ramirez charges (at least according to several reports): There was simply no corroboration of the charge and she wasn't even certain of what had happened until she had six days with people who had a political interest for her to remember it just right before she had any "clarity."

If these charges prove enough for Republicans to back down, then no one is safe. No conservative nominee will ever be confirmed.

Let's be clear on a couple of things.

First, we would not be where we are if Republican leaders in the Senate had done what they were supposed to do, which was to stick with proper protocol and go ahead with the originally scheduled vote. In diddling around they have lent credence to charges that of themselves have little credibility.

This is what happens when you don't have the courage of your convictions and instead start putting political calculation above what you know to be right. If they had gone ahead with the originally scheduled vote, the Ford charges would rightly be receding in the rear-view mirror of ignobility, and Ramirez would still be sorting out whether anything really happened.

Second, Tucker Carlson is right. I normally refrain from quoting Fox News hosts, since journalistic standards there can sometimes be as low as those at CNN. But it's a fact: If congressional Republicans can't confirm Kavanaugh, then there is no reason to vote for them.

In fact, Republican voters should pledge not to vote for any candidate who doesn't support Kavanaugh. Some of these people don't come with backbones and they need to be provided with them by the voters. Kavanaugh does not deserve having his life destroyed because Republicans couldn't stand up for him

Yes, Republicans are in a dilemma, but they are the ones who put themselves in it in the first place. Now their choice is between placating the left or responding to their conservative constituency. Choosing the former means they're irrelevant. Choosing the latter will cost them, but they will only have themselves to blame. 

Letting the left win now will only mean that they will win again and again and again.

Justice Scalia's Greatest Hits, Part II (does the 14th Amendment prohibit states from defining marriage as between a man and a woman?)

Justice Antonin Scalia responds to the reasoning in the Obergefell v. Hodges majority opinion that the 14th Amendment prohibits states from defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman:

When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue. 

But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lackingeven a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,”thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect. 

... This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, eventhose that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the Peoplesubordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Amen, Tony.

Matt Bevin issues statement on High Court's marriage decision

Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin on today's ruling by the Supreme Court prohibiting states from defining marriage as between a man and a woman:

I strongly disagree with today's ruling by the Supreme Court.  When the definition of marriage was put on the ballot 10 years ago, 74% of Kentuckians made it clear that they supported traditional marriage. Since that time, however, activist judges have chosen to ignore the will of the people, and to ignore the Constitutional principle of state's rights.

More here.

Supremes, "Stop (your democratic activities) in the name of (politics)"

Scalia, in his dissent from today's Supreme Court decision prohibiting states from defining marring as between a man and a woman:

Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court ...  the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. 

Read more here.

Family Foundation responds to Beshear order to county clerks on marriage

LEXINGTON, KY--The Family Foundation responded to Gov. Steve Beshear's order to all county clerks to issue marriage licenses on same-sex partners. The Governor told them in a letter: "Neither your oath nor the Supreme Court dictates what you must believe. But as elected officials, they do prescribe how we must act."

"Why is it," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for the group, "that county clerks are expected to 'do their duty' as elected officials on this issue, but Attorney General Jack Conway was not when he refused to defend Kentucky's marriage law? Conway was lauded for defying his oath of office, but now county clerks are being held to it. That's a blatant double standard."

"County clerks took an oath to the Kentucky Constitution," said Cothran, "not to a rogue Court that thinks it can repeal the votes of Kentuckians and that it can rewrite the U. S. Constitution."

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Scalia making sense again about another Supreme Court decision that doesn't

Here is Justice Antonin Scalia in another dissent to an increasingly liberal High Court, this time practicing its politics through King v. Burwell:

This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll in an insurance plan through an “Exchange established by the State.” The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary is not an Exchange established by the State—which means people who buy health insurance through such an Exchange get no money under §36B. 

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. “[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

Read the rest here.

Justice Scalia Is No Sir Thomas More

The St. Thomas More Society of Maryland awarded Supreme Court Justice with its "Man for All Seasons Award", which is "given to members of the legal profession who embody the ideals of St. Thomas More." I can think of few members of the legal profession whose legal philosophy is more opposed to the principles for which More stood.

St. Thomas More resigned when it became clear that his position as Chancellor under King Henry would require him to affirm the jurisdictional authority of the state without the limitation of the Church's own authority. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, said in an interview with the Catholic Reporter, "I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge.... If I genuinely thought the Constitution guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion, I would be on the other way. It would do nothing with my religion. It has to do with my being a lawyer."

When faced with his own career aspirations, St. Thomas More refused to relegate his faith to the private sphere of his life, rejecting the idea that he could be anything but a Catholic chancellor. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, separates his faith from his role as a judge to the point that he would be willing to perpetuate what his faith regards as a manifest injustice (a moral issue that makes King Henry's divorce look small by comparison). Whether or not Justice Scalia's view is correct, he certainly is no Thomas More.

Obama adds another Ivy Leager to the Supreme Court

As S. M. Oliva at the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out, in regard to Obama's new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Obama has contributed to diversity on the Court by ... appointing another Ivy League judge.

And everyone knows how under represented they are on the Court.