Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Contempt For Donald Trump:
To Presume Supreme Court Isn’t Political Is A Fallacy
The Huffington Post, July 13, 2016
All this talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her dismissive comments about Donald Trump possibly harming Hillary Clinton seems to be wishful thinking on the part of the media and possibly just pseudo purist analysis on the part of political/legal observers.
It may be odd, not to mention intriguing, that a Supreme Court Justice would spout her opinions about a presidential candidacy, but to presume that it is particularly wrong, that she should remain impartial about politics belies the reality of what happened in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2000.
Of course I am referring to Bush v. Gore and the 5-4 vote wherein five Republican appointed jurists just happened to determine that Florida should not recount disputed votes that might have benefited the Democratic candidate Al Gore.
The fact that no one specifically said, “Well, I’m voting this way because I think it would be a disaster for Al Gore to be president,” or had made comments against him during the election does not by any stretch of imagination make it a
coincidence that the five GOP justices voted the way they did and did so as a supposed impartial determination of the
facts at hand.
One might say the same about the Democratic appointed justices, except that their actions did not prevent the counting of ballots that might or might not have changed the results of an extremely close election and thus the future of our nation. Compounding this, of course, is that the five Republican justices acted even knowing that Gore had received a half million
more popular votes than George W. Bush. How much really would it have hurt the nation if the results were delayed a few weeks to absolutely know for sure who actually did win Florida’s electoral votes?
Another view of Ginsburg’s lambasting of Trump is that she would have to recuse herself from any future case regarding potential Trump laws or policies, as if the mere absence of specific language regarding Democratic candidacies spewed from
the mouths of the GOP justices somehow made them unbiased regarding their rulings concerning issues Democrats support.
It is just hogwash. It is political correctness that masks the realities that exist behind the closed door Supreme Court chambers.
Regarding Trump’s “outraged” warning that this will only inflame his base, that might be true, but it might also get the Bernie Sanders holdouts to get behind Hillary, as most of them adore Ruth Ginsburg, and also in light of Bernie’s enthusiastic endorsement of her yesterday.
So, the media pundits on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, which are mostly concerned with promoting an uncertain election outcome so that people will continually watch their news programs and inflate their ad rates, have everything to gain by fomenting controversy over a tremendously damning indictment of a presidential candidate by a respected jurist. Making matters worse, while doing so they didn’t balance the discussion with the fact that Trump has in an unprecedented manner
been spurned by two former presidents of his party, plus the most recent nominee Mitt Romney, other GOP presidential candidates this very year, a number of U.S. Senators and other high-ranking GOP officials.
It’s still way early to know what’s going to happen. Michael Dukakis was well ahead of George H.W. Bush after the Democratic convention and we know what transpired in 1988.
However, my main point is that while it may have been unorthodox for Ginsburg to say what she did, perhaps she was doing it as a patriotic American and it may well light a fire for those now on the fence to become avid Clinton supporters.
Follow Michael Russnow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrloy
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