This RBG replacement drama promises to be simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.
My first thought on hearing the news of her passing on 9/18 was, “But she had her whole life ahead of her!”
Too soon? Fine.
My second thought was that the GOP should immediately ram through a nominee. My third thought was that that might be pretty politically dicey, since the GOP just got done insisting that a SC opening in an election year should be held until after the election. Of course the Dems are being exactly as hypocritical, since they were also arguing the opposite in 2016. But the MSM will never point out the hypocrisy on both sides, obviously, so the GOP would take the hit alone.
But within a day I’d learned what you all already know by now about the pattern when it comes to election-year SC openings. To wit, there have been 29 such openings over the years, and the result is that when the same party holds the WH and the senate, a nominee is almost always named and confirmed (17 of 19 times), but when opposite parties hold the senate and WH, a nominee is almost never pushed through (only 1 of 10 times).
Which makes perfect sense in terms of rational human and political behavior: everyone is going to do what they can to advance their cause, especially when doing so is within the rules.
In this case, the pattern shows us that Trump and the GOP are totally in keeping with past tradition/precedent in putting a nominee on the court now. The Dems were arguing against that precedent in 2016 (trying to bully the other party into approving their party’s nominee), and are arguing against it again now (trying to intimidate the other party into NOT putting up and approving their own nominee).
My favorite argument in the immediate aftermath of RBG’s death was made by the most consistently inane ex-bartender/arschaffen AOC, who said that Trump is the kind of mean man who won’t grant a poor old woman’s dying wish. Because RBG’s death-bed wish was supposedly that Trump not nominate her replacement.
That’s not the way our legal system works, Sweet Pea. Otherwise, I could mention that Antonin Scalia’s dying wish was that he be replaced by a series of originalists who don’t just make stuff up on the bench. So now future Democrat presidents (shudder) must appoint Scalia clones until the end of time. You goof.
That story made me think of what I’d like my dying words to be, and so far, I have two options:
If I should die before my wife does, I’d like to beckon her closer with my withered, Pelosi-esque claw, and whisper feebly in her ear, “The $5 million is in a safe-deposit box in… ughhhhhhhh…”
If my wife dies first, and my daughters are at my deathbed, I want to say, “Your real father was actually… ugghhhhhhhh…”
Because I want to go out all hilarious like that.
But when it comes to RBG’s supposed dying words, I hope that this story is just another partisan Dem lie. Because it’s hard to think of anything sadder than someone, on the brink of meeting her Maker and facing eternity, still obsessed about petty politics.
And in RBG’s case it would be doubly sad, because her final years were practically a morality tale about the hollowness of politics, and the karmic butt-kicking awaiting those who make it the center of their lives.
She seems not to have been a bad person from most accounts, but she had a failing that all of us are prone to, which is selfishness. When Obama was in his first term and had a large majority in the senate (2008-2010), she was 77 years old and had been on the court for 15 years. She was 10 years past her first colon cancer surgery and radiation, and was newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is often fatal, especially for those her age.
If she had stepped down then, Obama would have easily replaced her with a young, far-left justice who would still be tormenting our country with terrible, partisan decisions for decades to come (IMHO).
Even when she had heart surgery in November of 2014, Obama would have been able to replace her with a young leftist, though maybe not as far left as he’d like, since the GOP held a narrow majority in the Senate, with half of Obama’s term to go.
But she held on, and risked what has now happened. I’m sure that she thought that Hillary would win in 2016, but that lost bet resulted in the macabre kabuki dance of the last three years. Leftist fangirls and SNL actresses created a wholly fictional “Notorious RBG” character – feisty, physically and mentally fit, a happy warrior for the leftist vision of an infinitely plastic constitutional jurisprudence.
After every new hospitalization and bout of chemo, the leftist press praised her return to vigorous good health the way the equally trustworthy North Korean press touts Kim’s latest round of golf, during which he made multiple holes-in-one and finished 16 under par.
But the reality was there for everyone to see. Regular hospitalizations. Nodding off during SOTU speeches and SC cases. Her public appearances revealed an unwell person with the posture of the letter “C,” and the frail bones and papery skin of Nancy Pelosi’s slightly less mummified older sister. She was desperately trying to last long enough to see the bad orange man vanquished, so that she could be replaced by a fellow traveling leftist co-religionist.
And as if it were punishment for her hubris, she finally succumbed at the 11th hour. For her sake, I hope that her last days weren’t consumed with thoughts of politics. Because if they were, those thoughts were surely bitter as ashes in her mouth.
By the way, does her story remind you of anyone else on the political scene right now?
Someone in obviously failing health, who should have stepped aside years ago? Someone who’s desperately trying to hang on until after the election, and being propped up and lied to by a bunch of desperately dishonest partisans, all of them pretending that he’s in great shape, and once the bad orange man has been vanquished, he’ll be free to step down and let a younger, far-left replacement carry on his legacy?
If you tell me you don’t know who I mean, you’re a lying, dog-faced pony soldier. C’mon man!
I’ve loved watching Cocaine Mitch at his Cocaine Mitch-iest for these last 10 days. Schumer is squawking about the end of the world, and the MSM are simultaneously lighting their hair on fire and indulging in self-pleasuring fantasies of creating a 27-judge Supreme Court if they win the election.
Dick “nobody ever calls him Richard” Durbin and Richard “everybody secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal are both contemplating skipping the hearings, or at least lying on the Senate floor and holding their breath while having a Curly-Howard-style circular kicking fit.
Meanwhile a gaggle of jackanapes, ne’er-do-wells and basement-dwellers are outside of McConnell’s Kentucky home, banging drums and screaming obscenities throughout the night, to deprive him of sleep.
I like to picture him sitting in an undisclosed location in DC, his fingers steepled in front of him as he watches the morons outside of his house in Kentucky through his ring doorbell camera. And then, his eyes twinkling with mirth, he looks over at the framed photo on his desk, of Harry Reid, on the day he killed the filibuster, thus enabling an army of Trump-appointed judges and – God willing – the notorious ACB replacing RBG on the SC!
You’d think the Dems would have learned their lesson by now: don’t mess with the Cartoon Schildkrote! (For those of you who didn’t read my column last Monday: that’s the German word for “turtle,” which translates literally as “shield toad.”)
(And no, I’m not going to stop trying to work these terrific German words into our everyday vocabulary. And only a real Adamschiffen would try to stop me!)
Speaking of which, some of you who have been reading this page and my columns for a couple of years – and why hasn’t some sharp-eyed investor already put those together into a handsome series of leather-bound volumes, like the old Time-Life Series on old west gunslingers or something? — may remember when I introduced you to the Simpson Face Punchability Index, or SFPI™ (Appropriately enough, the execrable Harry Reid holds the all-time high SFPI.)
Well it turns out the clever Germans beat me to it! Hat tip to reader Michaela Lieb, who told me that the Germans have a word that just rolls off the tongue – “backpfeifengesicht” (pronounced just like it’s spelled, duh!) – which means “a face that badly needs to be punched.”
God, I love the Germans!
Avenatti/ Harry “Backpfeifengesicht” Reid 2020!
Martin Simpson 