The Patriot Post® · Joe Biden's Court-Packing Non-Answer
The revulsion that we Americans have come to feel toward politics and politicians can perhaps be captured in a single utterance from Joe Biden: “I’ll put together a national commission.”
That was Straight-Talkin’ Joe’s response to a simple and straightforward question that he’s been asked repeatedly in recent weeks: Are you going to pack the Supreme Court?
Since the question deals with a radical restructuring of one of our three constitutionally mandated equal branches of government, it deserves a more honest answer than the one Biden provided. The American people deserve to know whether Scranton Joe will appoint Supreme Court justices legitimately, as President Donald Trump and all presidents before him have, or illegitimately, as many of his fellow Democrats are demanding that he do.
Biden provided that slippery non-answer to CBS’s Norah O'Donnell in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired last night. And lest Biden complain that we’re taking him “out of context,” as he repeatedly did with President Trump during Thursday night’s debate, here’s his answer in its entirety: “If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission of, bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats and Republicans, liberal and conservative, and I will, uh, ask them to over, uh, 180 days come back to me with recommendations as to how to, uh, reform the court system, because it’s getting out of whack. Um, the way in which it’s being handled, and it’s not about court packing. There’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated, and I’d look to see what recommendations that commission might make.”
Got that? Apparently, an “out of whack” court system is one that serves as an occasional check against socialism and statist tyranny. And the Supreme Court, which later today will welcome Justice Amy Coney Barrett onto its bench and thereby establish a 6-3 sort-of-conservative majority, is the embodiment of this “out of whack” system.
Biden’s newly carved-out position is, by the way, a clean-up of his earlier position, which he announced during a recent ABC News town hall. At the time, Biden said he’d clarify his stance on court packing ahead of the November 3 election based on how Republicans “handle” Judge Barrett’s confirmation process. But given that her confirmation is now a glorious fait accompli, and given that a solid majority of Americans now support it, Biden needed a non-answer that would buy him more time.
And thus: “I’ll put together a national commission.”
Biden, though, gave us a good glimpse of how this will all play out if he’s elected president. As he went on to tell O'Donnell, “The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football; whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. Presidents come and go; Supreme Court justices stay for generations.”
He’s right about that. Federal judgeships are lifetime appointments, and they include those to the High Court. But does anyone believe Biden and his fellow Democrats would be so concerned about the integrity of our judicial system if they enjoyed a liberal majority on the Supreme Court? Of course not.
The Left’s court-packing fetish, however, is merely a symptom. The actual disease is a general disregard for decorum and decency, for fair play and tradition. If the rules get in the way, we need to abolish them. And if we can’t readily abolish them, we need to create as much chaos as we can in the meantime. Let’s yell, scream, march, disrupt, demonize, doxx, threaten, loot, burn, and riot.
The integrity of the polling place? Let’s flood the nation with mail-in ballots. The Republican-controlled Senate? Let’s invent two states and four more Democrat seats. The filibuster? To heck with that “cooling saucer.” The Electoral College? It’s a “racist” and “undemocratic” institution. The Supreme Court? Let’s pack it.
The Left is about one thing: Fundamentally transforming the United States. You don’t do that if you love our country.