The leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion of Justice Samuel Alito and the Republican Senate primary victory of J.D. Vance in Ohio are the latest manifestations of the culture wars which are continuing and intensifying in the United States today. Both events have ramifications on their own, but they also reflect a dangerous malaise that is affecting the country.
The leaked draft opinion on its own suggests an array of questions including, how it was leaked, and who did the leaking. It raises the question as to what was the purpose of the source. Was it to rile up the defenders of the Court’s decision on Roe or to excite the opposition to Roe to be prepared to march to the barricades in June when the opinion is handed down? It was not only that the draft was leaked, but its explicit repudiation of the long-established norm of stare decisis. Henceforth, would this Court be governed by that principle, or will that axiom no longer determine how the Court will frame its opinions?
This draft suggested that politics—the Court’s politics—would prevail in its decision-making not the law or the fact that almost 70% of the American people support a woman’s right to choose. It will be this originalist reading of the Constitution which Justice Alito was using which he proposed should lead the Court, if given the opportunity, to overturn an entire array of cases involving gay rights, women’s rights, as well as racial and religious protections.
As for Vance’s victory in the Ohio primary, it is clear that internal political battles continue for the future of the Republican party. If any non-Trump, more moderate and traditionalist GOP candidate was going to resurrect the party it did not begin in Ohio. How important Donald Trump’s influence was on the outcome with his last minute endorsement of Vance is unclear to everyone except Trump. The former President claims that he flipped the election decisively to Vance. Meanwhile Vance’s claim to a political career rests on his own standing, naïve rhetoric, and choice of an extremist platform. Vance demonstrated as Donald Trump had done, that you can generate mass support based alone on your reputation, independent of any of the political positions you might espouse.
Both of these events demonstrate the extent to which American politics is deeply broken and the culture profoundly divided. The once sacrosanct U.S. Supreme Court is now ripped apart by politics. This is the U.S. Supreme Court with which President Richard Nixon, in the heat of Watergate, remarked that he would always comply if it issued a definitive ruling against him. This is the institution that now has permitted President Trump to continually toy with them. This Court has permitted Trump’s repeated legal challenges to retard the effectiveness of the legal process. Given the current balance among the Justices, this situation is unlikely to change in the near future.
As to the effectiveness of the rest of the federal judiciary, many of the Trump/McConnell appointees are already demonstrating their willingness to reduce the authority and power of the federal government whenever possible. While President Biden’s nominees are slowly moving into Court vacancies, if the Senate flips back to Republican control following the mid-term elections, there is no telling if a Mitch McConnell led Senate will permit many Biden potential nominees to be seated, even in the lower courts, before the 2024 elections.
In the Ohio election the difficulty that moderate Republicans face in seeking their Party’s nomination, let alone be elected this year was obvious. Vance and Josh Mandel, who ran second, received a combined 55% of the vote, with the moderate candidate Matt Dolan, who ran third, receiving 21.9% of the vote.
Voices for compromise and repudiation of the Trump brand of Republican—if Ohio is a signal—will be very hard pressed to succeed or win if they seek do so outside the Trump umbrella. MAGA voters are likely to dictate the party’s nominees in most of the primary campaigns this year. Any hope for a break in the divisive political scene in Congress is highly unlikely, especially if the GOP prevails in regaining control of Congress this fall. Unlike President Ronald Reagan and then Democratic House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, President Joe Biden and a Speaker Kevin McCarthy are unlikely to be seen playing golf together very soon.
With the abortion decision expected from the Supreme Court in June and a continuing, uncompromising mood in Congress, President Joe Biden and the America people face some very ugly times ahead. If all the institutions of Government continue to break down, the American people lose.
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