Nothing like counting your SCOTUS appointments before they're hatched. Why, it's almost like Republicans are planning to stuff the ballot box or something.
There's a nice long fat article over at Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard about what Republicans should plan on for their next SCOTUS nominees. As if they think they already have the 2016 election in the bag or something!
When Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office to the next president, he will be flanked by three, and almost four, octogenarians: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83), Antonin Scalia (80), Anthony Kennedy (80), and Stephen Breyer (77). The next president will likely have the opportunity to appoint a replacement for one, two, three, or maybe even four of those justices. These decisions will reshape the Court and how it reads the Constitution for decades to come. Republican presidential candidates will likely pledge to appoint “constitutional conservatives” to the bench—which ought to mean judges who will be constrained by its original meaning. However, GOP presidents have filled 12 out of 18 Supreme Court vacancies over the past half-century, with disappointing results. This track record teaches five important lessons that should guide future nominations.
The rest of the article goes on to talk about how they should definitely find justice candidates that are as extreme as the right wing in this country today, how they should be prepared to fight those battles and win, and more.
It does remind us, however, that Joe Biden was instrumental in walking through Justice Clarence Thomas' nomination. That's worth remembering when you hear the press tremble and drool over the prospect of Biden running for President.
Really, it's all smoke, because with this lineup of Republican yahoos, they're not going to see the inside of the White House or pick any Supreme Court nominees for a very long time to come.
