Now that Mitch McConnell's court-packing plan of talking older right-wing judges into retiring so he can replace them with younger, even righter-wing judges has been blessed by Chief Justice John Roberts, it's full-steam ahead. That now includes the odious Sen. Lindsey, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Our old pal Huckleberry is joining the effort, asking judges in "your mid-60s, late 60s" to step aside. "This is an historic opportunity," Graham said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt Thursday. "We've put over 200 federal judges on the bench. […] If you can get four more years, I mean, it would change the judiciary for several generations. So if you're a circuit judge in your mid-60s, late 60s, you can take senior status, now would be a good time to do that, if you want to make sure the judiciary is right of center." These judges wouldn't have to actually retire, they could stay on the bench with "senior status," taking a reduced workload but still serving.
We can boot Graham, McConnell and the Republican Senate majority, with your $3.
And they need to make the decision snappy, Graham says. "Well, if you wait, you know, November the 1st," would be too late to get someone else confirmed before the election. "So do it now. […] I need some time." Trump already has one in four U.S. Circuit Court judges, the pathway to the Supreme Court. He's also got two Supreme Court Justices. All of these appointees are young and rabidly, rabidly ideological. A handful of them are unqualified by virtue of lack of experience or temperament to serve by the American Bar Association's analysis.
Graham's desperation on this, by the way, isn't going to make Trump (who already has some awfully catty things to say about Graham) very happy. That's Graham assuming that the election doesn't go Trump's way. Hell, it could be Graham nervous that the election doesn't go his way. He's got reason for worry, as he's currently tied with his Democratic opponent in the polls back home.
It's also pretty much a 180-degree turn for Graham, who just two years ago said about a potential Supreme Court vacancy, "If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term and the primary process is started, we'll wait for the next election." That was when he felt he had to be consistent with his support in 2016 of refusing to consider allowing President Obama to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, under the completely specious theory that election year vacancies had to be left open. Graham, who was pretending at being reasonable back then, was one of just a few who even bothered to meet with Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland. Back then, when he was being a moderate, Graham said he and Garland discussed the "politicization of the judiciary."
"[Garland] said he hopes that the politics between the parties will not do a lot of damage to the judiciary," Graham said after the meeting. "I worry about that. That's why I think the 60-vote requirements [to confirm Supreme Court nominees] are good because it requires both parties to get a handful of votes." That lasted as long as it took to get Trump elected. There's a reason Graham is doing so poorly back home—only Susan Collins rivals him for demonstrating an utter lack of principle when it comes to saving their political skin.
