… because they want majority rule
Josh Marshall:
This is true it took them 50 yrs. But it’s also the first time in history a party plotted to take over the Courts like this. There were 3 Dem appointees on the Court when it decided Roe. And one of those was one of the two dissenters. The Roe Court was dominated by Eisenhower and mostly Nixon appointees. Yes, lots of elections. But the first time in American history any party or movement tried to do such a thing. And when the election thing stopped working they started stealing seats.
The best you can say about the Republican capture of the Courts is that they stole it fair and square, to paraphrase TR. When it wasn’t stealing seats, it was winning elections with the fewest votes, i.e., exploiting the minoritarian quirks of the political system, which is to say to say building up a Court majority overwhelming made up of presidents who got elected without winning the popular vote.
What Graham is complaining about here is that Democrats want to put the whole thing before the peoples representatives with an up or down vote, ie majority rule. Graham is saying that’s not fair. The minority gets to say you can’t vote on it. The Courts power has always rested on the sufferance of political majorities.
The through line through this whole drama is that having captured the Courts through unprecedented political means Republicans like Graham now want to dove headlong onto the fainting couch when the other side wants to repair the damage by political means. And unlike the crafty efforts to steal seats, exploit the minoritarian quirks of the constitution, the remedy is the most foundational of democratic remedies, passing laws by majority vote.
Whether Democrats will be able to pull this off will come down to the results of the November election. Republicans like Graham are so deep in the world of partisan scheming and theft that a majority vote looks like the ultimate travesty. The simple reality is that the corrupt Court majority is the fruit of Republican corruption and the answer is majority rule.
Originally tweeted by Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) on July 1, 2022.