READERS’ RESPONSES
Good column on Scalia. (THE SCALIA BOMB—Issue: 2/24/16) What folks seem to not take into account in this fight is the Trump phenomenon. I do not for one second believe if Trump is the nominee that the Democrats have a 244 Electoral College firewall. Trump is crossing lines and accessing alliances built many years ago. If McConnell is smart (and folks do truly wonder this) he will hold the line, not allow Obama to once again walk all over them, get Trump elected and keep the Court in its current 5-4 conservative leaning. I agree with Limbaugh when he said the robe guarantees nothing. Roberts was supposed to be a consistent conservative vote and yet he was the deciding vote in the Affordable Care Act decision.
I know I have said this several times to you in our now 17-year friendship but I mean it this time. Between Sanders, Trump and the fight over the Supreme Court…this could be a bonanza for us political junkies.
Peace,
—Bill Roberts
My old dear friend, Jim, your research is incomplete. This situation has happened before, and Justices were held over to the next president. Funny, when ultra left-wing socialist, Chuck Schumer, wanted to wait till the next election, I do not remember a big uproar.
—Ralph Genovese
After the do-nothing Republicans in Congress watch Donald Trump get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton, they will run to nominate someone, because next up is the most liberal justice you ever saw.
—Katherine Daugherty
This Supreme Court nominee nonsense the Senate is pulling should be a warning to voters this November that to continue to vote for Republicans is a vote for “No!” It is the most ineffectual, gridlocked Capitol Hill ever and it is the main reason Republican voters are rejecting the status quo and all the insiders. They feel as though nothing gets done in Washington, as trade deals kill jobs and manufacturing going oversees kills jobs, and they play games like this over and over and over again.
I say we try Mitch McConnell for treason.
—Chuck Gaffney
The Republican Congress absolutely must reject ANY Supreme Court nominee from a lame-duck president, whether Republican or Democrat—it’s just the way it is. Period. It is the job of the Senate to check the president’s nominees and it is the will of the people that this president NOT appoint a third liberal to the court.
After the election! Make the seat a referendum on the ideals and principles of this nation going forward.
—D. O. K.
Anthony Scalia dying is the perfect metaphor for the death of conservatism, which has been on life support now for decades. Only reason Republicans hold the House is because of redistricting to fix the vote, the Senate will soon be back in Democratic hands, and the only Republican to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988 was G.W. Bush, who is a pariah in his own party, as Donald Trump has perfectly illustrated by completely burying the entire Bush legacy and getting millions of primary votes in the process.
It’s over for conservatism. An entire generation of young voters has rejected their views on almost every social issue and even the emergence of Donald Trump, hardly a conservative, is again a prime example of their demise. Scalia, fat, smoking, shut-off from reality drops dead in a heap and is like the final hours of the great whale breathing its last.
It’s over.
Next!
—aassxx31
“As far as Trump’s sound victory, it is hard to argue it is anything but historic and impressive by every conceivable measure.” (MYTH BUSTER IN CHIEF—Issue: 3/2/16)
Leave it to me to quibble. Historic, probably, but impressive, not really. It’s the angry vote of the nation’s fastest-shrinking demographic: white men. White women are in there too. Chomsky carefully dissected this: Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is, in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of poorly educated whites. “He’s evidently appealing to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors like those that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war and catastrophe,” Chomsky told The Huffington Post in an interview on Thursday.
Yadda, yadda. Feeling impotent, lots of ignorant poor to middle class whites are voting Trump, so he’ll do what they can’t: Make America White Again. Bully foreigners—inside and outside the country. Bomb the shit out of everyone who looks at us the wrong way. Show everyone why we spend as much money on “defense” (really? With nearly 700 military bases all over the world? China has ONE. Russia has 28 or so. When do we call it offense?) than China, Russia and the next six most powerful nations combined.
One other quibble: “The right-wing Citizens United ruling a few years ago that has the Bernie Sanders bunch (and quite frankly Trump) in a tizzy has thus far gone belly up.”
Well, not exactly. It’s functioning quite well for Hillary.
—Vincent Czyz
I believe the one redeeming value of the Trump candidacy is that he is obliterating every Republican trope—free trade, foreign intervention, Bush kept America safe AFTER 9/11—that’s like I kept your house from burning down after it was a pile of ashes, Wall St. suckling, protecting the economic solvency of the one-percent, mythical attacks on Planned Parenthood, etc.
Your take on Trump’s pounding of the W. at the S.C. debate perfectly frames this point. Forget his attack on women, Hispanics, the disabled, Viet Nam POWs, the media, Obama, Hillary; it is his repeated rejection, backed as it is turning out by huge numbers of voters, of everything the party holds dear. No wonder the establishment and the right-wing media is going nuts. He is screwing up their agenda, their ideology. For a purist like Ted Cruz to eat shit time and again with evangelicals in purely red states, losing to a New York wild man is truly astonishing.
I think you, sir, are the perfect voice for these times a-comin’. This column has always preached a frontal assault on the system. Trump is like you say a grenade. He is challenging everything party politics used to hold to tightly and he is winning. Winning!
I would say that is impressive, all right.
—Perry
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. His new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon” out now!
