Below is my column on Fox.com discussing the most recent call to be “ruthless” and to pack the Supreme Court. It is only the latest call for fundamental changes in our system on the 250th anniversary of our revolution.
Here is the column:
“Let’s get ruthless.”
Those words are, unfortunately, nothing new in this age of rage. In just the last few weeks, various liberal pundits and politicians have been calling for radical and even violent action.
Even comedian Margaret Cho publicly declared this week that “we need a feral, bloodthirsty, violent Democrat.”
However, these words were reposted by Bill Kristol, the founder of the Weekly Standard and the current editor-in-chief of The Bulwark. Kristol was a leading conservative figure in the Republican Party.
Kristol left the Republican Party and is now a vehemently anti-Trump writer. There are certainly good-faith reasons why some conservatives have broken with Trump on a variety of issues.
However, the original column was endorsing the Democratic plan to pack the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority to force through a slew of political changes in the country.
Various Democrats have been pledging to not only impeach Trump (and a long list of other figures), but to pack the Supreme Court as soon as they regain power.
James Carville declared, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
This Nike School of Constitutional Law is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”
Years ago, I wrote an academic piece on the possible expansion of the Supreme Court, but there is a world of difference between that and a court-packing plan. Under my proposal, the court’s expansion would take almost two decades to ensure that no president could pack the court.
It was not just the company that Kristol is keeping on the issue, or his endorsement of the long-anathema concept of court packing, but also his rationale for the move. Kristol cited the successful Democratic gerrymandering efforts in California and Virginia as triumphs that should now propel the left to pack the Court.
Kristol reposted the call for court packing from his colleague Jonathan Last: “Expanding the Supreme Court is no different from redistricting in California and Virginia,” he said. “It is a proportionate response to Republican attempts to degrade liberal democracy and move America toward a post-liberal order.”
Praising governors Gavin Newsom and Abigail Spanberger for their “ruthless” leadership in response to Republican gerrymandering, Kristol insisted that Democrats must meet “force with force” and must now pack the Supreme Court. Being ruthless, he argues, is the “only road to preserving liberal democracy.”
There is, of course, a considerable difference between altering political districts and packing the courts. Political gerrymandering has been around since the earliest days of the Republic.
The courts are not the same political fungible units. Indeed, the favorite term on the left is “illiberal democracy” to refer to democratic systems used to curtail rights and weaken checks and balances. Yet this illiberal means is being cited by Kristol as essential to save liberal democracy.
Liberal justices have spoken out against these calls for court packing.
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it would destroy the continuity and cohesion of the court.
She added, “If anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”
The political districts are precisely that: political. They are part of the two political branches in a tripartite system. It is the courts that keep these political branches within their proper constitutional orbits.
There was, of course, no movement to pack the court when a series of liberal majorities rewrote major areas of constitutional law in the 1960s and 1970s. These demands from figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren were only heard when the court began to rule against their chosen outcomes.
Warren explained that the court had to be packed to bring its rulings in line with “widely held public opinion.”
Of course, Article III was designed precisely to blunt such pressures to rule according to “widely held public opinion.” The Supreme Court is a counter-majoritarian body that was created to protect rights against the passions or demands of the majority.
As I discuss in my book, “Rage and the Republic,” the founders sought to avoid “democratic despotism” and “mobocracy” by creating barriers to direct democratic powers. The Supreme Court is essential as a bulwark against such impulse politics. Those pushing for an instant liberal majority would convert the court into the type of partisan judicial bodies seen in states like Wisconsin where jurists are selected to robotically vote for party priorities.
There is a reason why “ruthless” was not an attribute cited by anyone in the constitutional convention to be fostered in our Republic. On the contrary, the system is designed to temper ruthless passions for reasoned debate.
The court itself may be the ultimate test of the lingering capacity for reason among our citizens. Of course, we can be ruthless and tear down our institutions on the 250th anniversary of our Republic.
No democratic system is ever immune from self-inflicted wounds. That is why Benjamin Franklin reminded us that this remains our Republic if we can keep it. This year, we can celebrate that Republic, or we can ruthlessly destroy it in a fit of blind rage.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
N.B.: The original column was edited to make clear that Bill Kristol was reposting and endorsing the words of his colleague. I am still hoping that Kristol might still expressly reject this position and say that he was merely reposting a writer on the Bulwark and should not have highlighted this particular call for court packing. Thus far, he has not done so.
The January 6th protestors seemed like they were full of rage. Why was it okay for them to have rage but not others?
The Republicans were just cheated out of an election. Damn right they were pissed. If you think Biden won 81 million votes you as nuts as the guy who tried to kill trump last night.
It’s really odd that those extra 15-20mil voters just appeared out of nowhere. They didn’t vote in Obama’s second election and they didn’t vote in the last one. You would think that if they were registered, and willing to vote for Biden, that they would have been more than willing to show up to support Kamala. Really strange.
A great number of people were confident that Americans would not elect a gold leaf pile covered pile of manure, yet they turned out for Trump anyway.
Which rage-filled J6 protestors are you talking about? The one’s attending a mostly peaceful rally or the hundred plus paid FBI informants/agitators that everyone swore under oath didn’t exist?
Rage, rage at the dying of the light, ok?
They were Trump supporters. They get to rage about everything. Wearing masks, getting vaccinated, not packing into tight groups for long periods of time when contagion is killing thousands of Americans each month. It’s such an imposition to not have their votes “count” when the other candidate gets more votes.
They believed it when told that the Democrats would destroy the country, whatever that is supposed to mean. The joke is on them because Trump represents the oligarchs who are destroying the middle class.
Trump is the boy who cried “assassin!”.
Or maybe leftists should stop trying to kill him?
Begone troll
So sez the troll
Yet, people keep coming at him with actual, real weapons in hand to try to exactly that.
And you have proof? Define “at him”.
And what’s the difference between “actual” and “real weapons”?
Well yes, there is proof. Ryan Routh is sitting in prison with a life sentence for his assassination attempt. Crooks will also be convicted of his assassination attempt, he’s also looking at a murder charge in PA. You’re confused about the “at him” part?
Kristol was never a conservative, he was a rabid, ranting neocon, advancing the interests of the Deep State, until he fell from favor. He is still a rabid, ranting, posturing clown; he has just been forced to choose a new audience to try to infect with his lunacy.
It was more than Bill Kristol simply falling from favor. The increasingly Conservative base of the Republican party started getting tired of his Neocon DS BS positions and eventually stopped listening to him, as they did others like him. Something seems to have snapped inside him when that happened and he has actively turned on his former audience. Perhaps he realizes what a mistake he made, or maybe it has something to do with his new leftist audience not really accepting him either. He has become a ‘useful idiot’ to them, and that is a realization he probably hates more than anything else. He is desperate to become meaningful and listened to again. It is sad, but reflects that he never really understood his former audience in the first place.
neocon = new conservative. Right there in the name. He doesn’t seem to be suffering from rabies.
The only politician that comes to mind who wears especially colored face paint is Trump.
Trump was in show business, such as wrestling.
He knows how these things are done.
It’s about illusion and optics.
Yeah, Corey Comperatore wasn’t killed in Butler, in front of his family, it was all smoke and mirrors. Kirk wasn’t killed either, all just an illusion.
I assume you are suggesting Trump used is show biz skills to stage the gunman shooting at the WHCA dinner. If not, what is your cryptic comment related to?
Kristol and his ilk (Rove, McConnell, Christie, etc.) are hateful at how voters installed Trump the Populist twice. They are angry because in the Good Ole Days the system served insiders (not that it does not now) quietly as they agreeably achieved essentially nothing and reinforced the system with Do No Harm (or Anything Else) appointments and bureaucrats. The In-Crowd got wealthy and the low IQ voter was pacified with ‘just the best we can do’ mantras every year. Now the polarization has put all the shenanigans (on both sides) at Center Ring of the Big Top with all the clowns in full makeup!!! Kristol lost his mind as the curtain has been pulled back and we no longer need his ‘insight’ to see the S-Show at work.
I am amazed at the size of the chasm (far right to far left) that he has crossed due to his hatred for Trump. Hate is all consuming and will eventually destroy him and the country.
Perhaps it is irrelevant. But Kristol used to rely on funding from Republican billionaire Phil Anschutz. Now liberal billionaires like Pierre Omidyar write checks to fund his “causes”.
It should be a crime to stage an assassination attempt. It’s akin to a bomb hoax.
Akin? Sounds voodoo. Got a legal basis for that nonsense?
It’s pathetic, really. Liberals have nothing left. It’s like watching a fish flopping around on the dock, taking its last breath. If they can’t silence you by shouting you down or censoring you on social media, or making up some racist hoax, if they can’t fabricate charges to either bankrupt you or put you in jail, if they can’t pack the court or gerrymander your state with 40% republicans so you have zero representation, they have nothing. None of their policies make any sense at all. They don’t even help their own constituents. All they have left is violence.
Not only mouthing off about violence. They encourage violent, bloodthirsty action – by others because they are gutless to do anything but talk and read and write.
If only 1% of the approximately 150 Million on the Left went for violent blood-thirsty action every day that would be 1.5 Million daily attacks.
Do you see these blood-thirsty attacks anywhere? Are they in the room with you now?
Have conservative policies been given chances to solve society’s problems? How well did they do?
Maybe if you’re able to kill off enough conservatives, those wonderful leftist policies will finally have the chance to succeed. Hell, it worked for Stalin and Mao.
Conservative policies are mainly to give tax reductions to corporations and the billionaires and make the middle and lower class pay for it with massive deficit spending caused inflation. They also like to cut social services to increase the number of people so desperate for work that wages are driven down. These breaks allow for investment overseas and the buying up of housing that used to be for individual families and turning them into rental properties with massive collusion on rental prices to prevent competition from holding down the rents. Conservatives hate putting money into infrastructure repairs, but love expanding it to lower the costs to the corporations.
Uhhh …. ever heard of the ten commandments? How ’bout that mayflower compact?
It’s criminal for troll to stage comment. Penalty death
American leftists like Kristol are like the 10 year old boy who screams at the top of his lungs, stomps his feet and holds his breath until he turns blue. Later he can’t explain why he was upset. We live in age of relative prosperity and unprecedented peace. Life spans have reached historical highs. In many ways, this is the best of times. Yet our leftist friends increase the level of hysteria. Are they cynically attempting to panic the populace or are they really unwell?
Just the type of garbage news from Turley to get you old farts frothing at the mouth. Its bad enough you hate anyone/anything liberal, but now you’re eating your own. See a historical pattern?
Death to MAGA, Death to all MAGAots.
Amazingly ironic that there were likely several journalist/publisher reps from Kristol’s Bulwark/Substack at last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner, – waiting to take a verbal bite out of Trump. No longer fun-filled jest, but rather focused on mission accompli.
Do I think they were planning to speak on the role and responsibility of MEDIA in stoking and fomenting relentless dislike and actual hatred of Trump and his administration?
I watched the 0700 news this morning on MSM. Not a word. Not a single word to remind journalists and MEDIA of how non-stop misleading, fact-selective, MANIPULATED news coverage against the Trump administration, its Executive departments/agencies, and personnel, can manifest in stoking and inspiring political violence.
I am soooooooooooooo done with MSM.
Gordy Thomas is correct. I had heard people talk about the uniparty in D.C. for years and was skeptical about that but the longer Trump has been in office the more I see it. Virtually all those pundits of yesteryear were simple squishes who would say or do anything to keep their relevance in D.C. Frankly I thought Bill Kristol was dead but I suppose that was only his career and the Weekly Standard. It’s funny if not tragic that the more that Trump and his team expose our government, the more the Denizens of D.C become illiberal, even fascist in their attempt to keep power centered in Washington. Kristol Carville, Warren, Schumer, the Lincoln project, Mitch McConnel, all look alike. The disdain of the Washington types for the people of this country just gets more and more breath taking. And it seems that the people respond in kind.
Washington needs a clean out. There is nothing wrong with the institutions but a lot of faces need to change and antique rules need to be discarded. It’s been apparent for a long time that the filibuster needs to go because all it does is block real action and cements the right wing and left wing institutions in Washington and we have these pointless government stoppages that achieve nothing. The longer it holds up needed progress, the greater and more radical the supposed resolutions become to break it.
To think I used to subscribe to the Weekly Standard……..Kristol went from being a reasonable conservative to being a nutcase. Thanks to Trump, Kristol has outted himself as a lunatic. Packing the Supreme Court tosses the objective of a non-partisan referee. Wouldn’t expect anything less from the craven Left.
Bill Kristol has suffered a mental breakdown over Trump. There are many Republicans and conservatives who oppose Trump for policy and/or character reasons. Kristol, however, has gone from serving as Dan Quayle’s chief of staff to endorsing the most radical Democrat positions.
Ah the illustrious Mr. Kristol – the unpaid political mercenary who tossed his flexible ethics and conservative leanings into the garbage can once his Republican Anti-Christ won and shattered his Uniparty Get-Nothing-Done preference for Presidents. Now he is simply a Scorched Earth Never-Trumper who prefers the Any-Fringe-Element Democratic Party because it will fight the Anti-Christ! What a total unserious Loon this guy became. Karl Rove will probably join this idiot in chants of Pack-The-Court.
The left will never be happy until they murder our President Trump.
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“The attempted shooter at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is 31 year old Cole Tomas Allen from Torrance, California and he is in custody,” New York Post and Fox News reporter Karol Markowicz confirmed in a post on X.
You missed the headlines, he did not murder the president.
Learn to read Ano
________________
happy until they murder. Key word until they murder. I didn’t say they did, but we now have three attempts.
What does that have to do with the article?
Top news… The left wants Prez Trump dead.
Is it sure that Trump was the target? Sure, Trump literally paints himself as the target with that orange roll-on everyday, but this doesn’t seem like a good assassination plan.
Bill Kristol perfectliy fits to DEMs: He hates DJT and is a pundit, who worked
* for Daniel P. Moynihan’s (D-NY) Senate campaign,
* as a leading figure for promoting Irak war, pressing POTUS Clinton argued that Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat to US,
* that Harriet Miers dropped her SCOTUS nomination,
* for John McCain’s Presidential campaign,
* that ICE and CBP get ripped up root and branch.
Carville and Kristol are not exactly leading exponents of democracy of any sort. Nor is Elizabeth Warren. This begs the question of who exactly is the leader of the Democrats today? We simply do not know. There is a ruling cabal of some sort, most probably including foreign elements together with a handful of billionaires. But it’s not Schumer or Jefferies. They only do soundbites.
I would caution Kristol to determine who he supports and not just what he supports, and I believe he doesn’t know much of either beyond his abject hatred of Trump.
Kristol is a perfect example of a Bush/Cheney Republican. For the Never Trumper’s, politics was always about lining their pockets. “Compromising” on spending so that both sides got rich, and the taxpayer’s got stuck with the bill. The necon’s got their wars and the left got their welfare state, and as long as no one came along to rock the boat, both sides made a ton of money.
How could “packing the court” not be viewed as the first shot of the next civil war? Obviously, the reason the left wants to pack the court is for the purpose of disarming the public, opening the border to flood the country with illegals, granting blanket amnesty, censoring opposition, arresting their rivals. Pretty much what they’ve been up to for the past decade. As soon as the left gets control of power, you can see what they do with it. Look no further than, CA, MA, IL, NY, and now VA.
It might be so viewed – but no court has been packed, although the current pipeline has been filled with Federalist Society picks, groomed for the position from their college days and guided and protected to prevent ever encountering any difficult case to give away their true character.
Proponents. Exponents is math. Also, it raises the question. “Begs the question” is a form of logical fallacy.
As always, Professor, you stopped short of calling a fascist, a fascist. Wanting a one party power so that they can determine all of our lives and force their radical craze theories upon us, including racial theories, is fascism. And if you want to call it Marxist totalitarianism, instead, that’s fine too. But none of us should make any
mistake about who they are and what they want to do.
An ancient adage comes to mind: “Be careful what you wish for.” Rabid TDS-afflicted Democrats would pack the Court IF, at some point in the FUTURE, they recaptured control of Congress and the White House. The GOP controls Congress and the White House NOW. Memo to rabid Democrats — including the Ragin’ Cajun and Billy Kristol — do the math and be careful what you wish for.
Proof positive that RINOs were never true Republicans to begin with.
How many people, from either party, go into politics because they have something terrific to offer? I suspect that most people get into it for the power, hoping it will lead to lots of money.