control of the Supreme Court functions as a somewhat delayed reward for winning ideological battles at the presidential level, and then as a check on the next ideological coalition as it’s taking power.
.. Thus judicial appointees of the pre-New Deal era restrained Roosevelt’s liberalism for a time, and the judicial appointees from liberalism’s New Deal-Great Society heyday continued to advance liberal causes even as the Democratic coalition fell apart.
.. it was Souter who was the real outlier, Souter who really prevented the long era of Republican appointees from putting restraints on social liberalism, Souter who made today’s judicial battles seem more existential to the right than to the left.
.. Souter was sold to George H. W. Bush by his chief of staff, John Sununu, and the moderate-to-liberal New Hampshire Republican Warren Rudman as an easy confirmation because he lacked a paper trail.
.. Souter spent a brief time voting with the conservatives, then cast one of the crucial votes to uphold Roe, then swiftly evolved into as reliable a liberal as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama could have ever hoped to appoint … and then, as the by-then-inevitable coup de grâce, retired under Obama, allowing Sonia Sotomayor to take his place.
.. Had Souter simply voted like a typical Republican appointee — not in lock step with Antonin Scalia, but as an institutionalist, incrementalist conservative, in line with the current chief justice, John Roberts — then it’s likely that Roe v. Wade would have been mostly overturned in the 1990s, returning much of abortion law to the states, and that the gay rights movement would have subsequently advanced through referendums and legislation rather than a sweeping constitutionalization of cultural debate.
.. This, in turn, would have dramatically lowered the stakes of judicial politics for many Republican voters
The Bad, the Worse and the Ugly
the most revealing thing in the interview may be Mr. Trump’s defense of Bill O’Reilly, accused of sexual predation and abuse of power: “He’s a good person.” This, I’d argue, tells us more about both the man from Mar-a-Lago and the motivations of his base than his ramblings about infrastructure and trade.
.. How much difference has it made, really, that Donald Trump rather than a conventional Republican sits in the White House?
.. the ignominious collapse of the effort to kill Obamacare — owed almost nothing to executive dysfunction. Repeal-and-replace didn’t face-plant because of poor tactics; it failed because Republicans have been lying about health care for eight years. So when the time came to propose something real, all they could offer were various ways to package mass loss of coverage.
.. Tax reform looks like a bust .. because nobody in the G.O.P. ever put in the hard work of figuring out what should change and how to sell those changes.
.. it’s clear that the administration has no actual infrastructure plan, and probably never will.
.. there are some places where Mr. Trump does seem likely to have a big impact — most notably, in crippling environmental policy. But that’s what any Republican would have done
.. Trumpist governance in practice so far is turning out to be just Republican governance with (much) worse management
.. Trumpism has brought is a new sense of empowerment to the ugliest aspects of American politics.
.. one thing the interviewees often say is that Mr. Trump is honest, that he tells it like is, which may seem odd given how much he lies about almost everything, policy and personal. But what they probably mean is that Mr. Trump gives outright, unapologetic voice to racism, sexism, contempt for “losers” and so on
.. Mr. Trump isn’t an honest man or a stand-up guy, but he is, arguably, less hypocritical about the darker motives underlying his worldview than conventional politicians are.
.. they provide a safe space for people who want an affirmation that their uglier impulses are, in fact, justified and perfectly O.K.
..
whether unapologetic ugliness is a winning political strategy.
Maybe liberals are so ‘P.C.’ because conservatives keep excusing bad behavior
I’m not naive enough to be stunned by Akin, King, O’Reilly or Trump, but as a Republican, I continue to be dismayed by the willingness of fellow Republicans and conservatives to overlook, rationalize and make excuses for this type of behavior. And each time I see conservatives defending, or looking away, in the face of other conservatives’ noxious behavior, I become less and less sure that liberals aren’t justified in taking the sometimes-condescending, always-disapproving “politically correct” approach that they do in these all-too-predictable episodes.
.. I didn’t always think this way about liberal highhandedness toward Republicans. I used to co-sign the typical conservative rejoinder to political correctness, which generally goes something like: Life’s not fair, so please get over yourself.
.. Yes, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was rewarded for choosing expediency over morality by endorsing Trump’s candidacy, even as he condemned Trump’s attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” In doing so, Ryan confirmed an unsettling truth: When some in the Party of Lincoln witness racism, it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. Indeed, the GOP won big in 2016 embracing the same rhetoric I’m calling out now — rhetoric we said we were leaving behind in the 2013 autopsy report commissioned after Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat.
.. Trump lost the popular vote with our current demographic landscape by a margin of almost 3 million, and demographics are rapidly changing, not in his favor. Republicans who treat 2016 as the rule rather than the exception will come to regret it.
.. it’s not political correctness to expect common courtesy and respect. And it’s not a burden on a politician or anyone else to refrain from making sexist and racist remarks. It’s both the right thing to do, and an approach in keeping with the values that the Republican Party is supposed to stand for, including judging all people as individuals, not caricaturing them because of their race or gender.
.. It’s hard to deny that we’ve become a society where people are put out by the smallest slights, real or perceived.
.. every time conservatives and Republicans let an O’Reilly slide — rather than take a stand in favor of common decency — the “politically correct” scorn of liberals becomes just a bit more justified.
.. no longer defending the indefensible would be a start.
Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats’ trap
More than that, though, Trump’s inability to unite Republicans behind his health-care bill showed Democrats that they don’t have to make a deal with him out of fear of him making an extremely conservative deal with the House Freedom Caucus. It turns out he can’t make a deal with them at all. Kind of makes it hard to play the two sides off against each other.
.. Republicans want to give private-sector companies tax credits for building approved projects, which they then could charge people to use. Think toll roads, except for everything. Democrats, meanwhile, want the government to take advantage of its still historically low borrowing costs to build whatever we need itself. They’re afraid that tax credits would only fund the most profitable projects, not the most necessary ones; that they’d mostly be a windfall for projects that were already going to happen, not promote new ones; and that the money would go to people close to Trump ..
.. Why turn him into the winning winner he ran as, who alone possesses the ability to break through the gridlock of Washington, when they can keep him as the losing loser he’s governed as, who can’t even get a bill through one chamber of Congress his party controls? They won’t, at least not on terms that are remotely acceptable to Republicans.
.. That’s what happens when everyone knows you can’t afford to walk away from the negotiating table, say, because you have a 36 percent approval rating. Nobody will be afraid of your threats, everybody will call your bluff, and you will cave to whatever they want.