Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/783219
WhenSenateRepublicansdecidedlastyear to ditch their constitutional duty — by stiff- ing President Obama's eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee, denying him even the courtesy of a hearing — they took a big political risk. Theygambledthatthevot- ers wouldn't punish them on election day. Turns out, they were right. Their unprec- edented power play paid off. And that's why the minor- ity Democrats are currently up the creek. They can fume all they want about how the GOP stole Merrick Garland's seat — justifiably so — but their op- tions for blocking Trump nom- inee Neil Gorsuch are basi- cally nonexistent. Senate rules require 60 votes for passage, which means that Mitch Mc- Connell needs eight Demo- crats to say yes. But if Demo- crats dig in, McConnell can al- ways change the Senate rules and put Gorsuch on the court with a simple majority vote — 51 Republicans saying yes, no Democrats needed. How come Senate Demo- crats have so little leverage about the future of the high court? Because elections have consequences, and the 2016 election is Exhibit A. Last year, Democrats calcu- lated (or hoped, or assumed) that voters would be outraged about the GOP's work stop- page on the Garland nomina- tion. McConnell and his al- lies insisted that Garland was DOA simply because Obama was a lame duck in his final year, that presidents don't get to put anyone on the court in their final year. The Republi- cans lied, of course, because lame duck Ronald Reagan got to put Anthony Kennedy on the court, with bipartisan sup- port, in his final year. Democrats figured that the 2016 electorate would rail at the injustice of the GOP stance on Garland, and that Demo- cratic-leaning voters, in par- ticular, would cast ballots en masse with the court's future direction in mind. That didn't happen. According to the national exit polls, 21 percent of all vot- ers cited the Supreme Court as the "most important" fac- tor in their voting decision. In that cohort, Trump swamped Clinton by 15 points. Overall, 70 percent cited the Supreme Court as an "important" fac- tor, and Trump beat Clinton there too. Those stats jibe with what we learned on the ground last year. Social and religious conserva- tives, who fixate on the Supreme Court far more than their lib- eral counterparts, opted to ig- nore Trump's serial lying and moral failings, because he was their best hope for a post-Sca- lia conservative bench. Evan- gelical Christians, in particu- lar, recognized that Trump was a detestable human being, but Mike Pence worked hard, and successfully, to hose them down and stoke them up. Even the Republican estab- lishment folks who personally loathed Trump got in line on the court issue. John Boehner, the ex-House speaker, said last fall that Trump's behav- ior "disgusted" him. Neverthe- less, "The only thing that re- ally matters over the next four years or eight years is who is going to appoint the next Su- preme Court nominees...The biggest impact any president can have on American society and on the American economy is who's on that court." So while the average Demo- cratic-leaning voter dozed off about Merrick Garland's hos- tage status, the average con- servative voter got assurances that Trump would deliver on tilting the court. Promise made, promise kept. McConnell, in his role as Trump enabler, says that Trump's nominee should be "confirmed based upon the completely outstand- ing credentials that we're go- ing to see," which is gall- ing, of course, because Gor- such will occupy the seat that was meant for Garland, whose completely outstanding cre- dentials, as a lower-court judge, had long been vetted and supported by Republicans. But there's no point in lash- ing the Republicans for their success. They got their voters stoked about the court, Dem- ocrats did not. If party lead- ers had driven home the "sto- len seat" message; if the Dem- ocratic-leaning citizens who stupidly stayed home, or wasted their votes on Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, had in- stead paid sufficient attention to the Garland farce; if they had made peace with Clin- ton's imperfections and sensi- bly viewed her as the best ve- hicle for tilting the high court leftward, then the odds are high that Trump would never be where he is. And Senate Democrats would not be reduced to firing blanks. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. DickPolman OnSupreme Court, Dems simply lost Cartoonist's take UC Berkeley is only a few hours away but it occupies an- other universe in many ways. However, the vi- olent protests over a conserva- tive speaker—ri- ots in more hon- est parlance—can help give our local citizens a window into the radical left, its mindset, tactics and goals. While adopt- ing the moniker "antifa" (in a lame attempt to paint them- selves as anti-fascists), the black clad thugs, property-destroyers and assaulters-of-Trump-sup- porters are the real contempo- rary inheritors of the Fascist par- ties and movements of the 1900s. Politically motivated violence is the darkest and most despi- cable violence that plagues our nation. Violent crimes of greed, passion or psychopathic com- pulsion cannot, unfortunately, be excised from civil, law-abid- ing society. No sane person ra- tionalizes the perpetrators or their vile deeds. Political vio- lence, on the other hand, finds a reprehensible level of toler- ance, support, or even advocacy among radical fringes. Let's dismiss, for present pur- poses, anti-abortion violence; it is evil but rarely occurs. Vio- lence and property destruction by rabid environmentalists or animal rights fanatics happens more often but is still widely condemned by mainstream lib- erals. Some Donald Trump sup- porters lashed out physically at protesters in Trump events; they were often goaded by ges- tures, signs or shirt-embla- zoned slogans of said "protest- ers." They were condemnable, there was some inexcusable ver- bal encouragement by Trump but were, overall, rare incidents. The violence, which had its start under Obama's ten- ure, was inflicted first by union thugs and others on Tea Party protesters who assembled peaceably in permitted ral- lies, and attended town halls to register disapproval of pro- posed health insurance re- forms. Union "muscle" was used against anti-President Clinton protesters, and families, in Phil- adelphia. Anarchists and other as- sorted professional rioters of the far left have routinely de- scended on the locations where the International Monetary Fund met, where Republican conventions were held and, now, anywhere conservatives and Trump-supporting people have legitimately, peaceably as- sembled. The Black Lives Mat- ter (BLM) movement, founded and sustained on the false- hood that thug druggie Mi- chael Brown was shot while his hands were up, has a singular distinction of advocating vio- lence and destruction, partic- ularly directed at law officers. The Occupy Wall Street en- campments often morphed into lawless, violent crime-fests. Last June, in "How The American Left Made Politi- cal Violence the New Normal," Ben Shapiro recounted how "leftist protesters at a Don- ald Trump Rally in San Jose, California, chased down Don- ald Trump supporters and beat them bloody, spit in their faces, pelted a female Trump sup- porter with eggs, hurled rocks at police horses, and broke down metal barriers—all while burning American flags and screaming slogans like 'America Was Never Great!' and 'Make America Mexico Again!'…Un- der the tender tutelage of the Obama Department of Jus- tice, mass violent action by left- ists has become commonplace across the country… "Vox editor Emmett Ren- sin tweeted, 'Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot'…Deray McKesson, a leader of BLM, has openly justified ri- ots and looting." Democrat and Hillary Clinton operative Rob- ert Creamer was exposed in WikiLeaks emails arranging to have people paid to incite vio- lence and unrest at Trump ral- lies. "Many have long suspected that if you scratch an American liberal, you will find a budding fascist…More and more, liberals are openly embracing violence as a path to power. Not just the nuts, either: their recently-de- feated vice-presidential nomi- nee, Tim Kaine, has called on his fellow liberals to become street fighting men." Look up "Liberals Embrace Violence," Powerlineblog.com (by J. Hin- deraker, Feb. 2). You'll find an embedded video montage of lib- erals advocating, and in some cases actually committing, po- litical violence. The Berkeley riots prevented the appearance of conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News; Occupy Oak- land boasted in a tweet that they "won this night. We will control the streets, liberate the land, fight fascists" and other fantastical, even delusional boasting. Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, ruminated on the upside-down, dysto- pian climate of violence by left- ist thugs: "I've decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant (Milo Yiannopoulos) who has an African-America boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were club- bing people who hold different points of view. I feel that's rea- sonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus." Tyler Stone posted "How Fas- cists Take Power" at capitalre- search.org on Feb. 2, and sum- marized the path that fas- cists used to take over in Italy (Benito Mussolini), Spain (Fran- cisco Franco) and Germany (Adolph Hitler). It's worth look- ing up by title, and I posted it at donpolson.blogspot.com. "So, what's the pattern? How do fascists take power? First, they are angry with election re- sults or how the country is be- ing run (DP: that can apply across the political spectrum). Then fascists use militant tac- tics to force the population into supporting, or acquiescing in, their cause, even though most citizens don't actually support the fascist agenda. "Today, some persons who claim to oppose fascism have started using fascist tech- niques, such as blockading roads and other modes of tran- sit into the city, perpetrating vi- olence against those who dis- agree with them politically and using fear to suppress those who have different political views. 'We will fight the fas- cists' (Occupy Oakland) could be a quote from Mussolini, Franco, or Hitler." The left is fo- menting a "constitutional cri- sis" to rationalize fascist tactics. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Fascist purveyors of le ist violence According to the national exit polls, 21 percent of all voters cited the Supreme Court as the "most important" factor in their voting decision. In that cohort, Trump swamped Clinton by 15 points. Sounding off Alookatwhatreadersaresayingincommentsonourwebsiteandonsocialmedia. Alittleofftopicbutwhywasthereno Frontier phone service (including 911) in the Manton area from Thursday night until Monday morning and yet when contacted they said "no outage." At this point, I would probably be censored were I to say how folks up here really feel about Frontier Communications. Jack Work: On preparations being made for recent winter storms. Yes Trump could have had a hotel built, but the state of California actually pays their contractors unlike the trumpster who never seems to. Orval Strong is right to be scared, we have unleashed a banana republic dictator on our once proud country and I too fear for the calamity that is sure to follow. Randy Bettis: On letter stating President Trump is looking out for Americans. 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