Patterico's Pontifications

8/15/2016

Hewitt Falls for Trump Line on Supreme Court

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:58 am



Hugh Hewitt beats his Supreme Court drum once again in advocating for the election of a con man to be the Republican President. Hugh describes an exchange he had with Donald Trump in which Trump not only promised to stick to his previously announced list or something very much like it, but also said that McConnell could block his nominees if they turned out to be very different. Hugh says:

There you have it. If Donald Trump departs from his list of future Supreme Court nominees, Donald Trump has authorized Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to block that nominee and enforce the list. And I have no doubt that they would, because not only have they shown the collective spine to do so in the course of the Garland debate, here they have irrefutable evidence of the potential president’s consent to a future blockade if necessary.

Trump is thus now effectively stopped from effectively arguing against the Senate’s refusal to confirm an unacceptable nominee.

Now Ben and others can conjure up all sorts of hypotheticals wherein Trump backtracks or McConnell and the Senate GOP caves. But there is no way any additional proof can be brought forward on the subject. Clinging to objections that the Supreme Court argument has no weight now is in fact proof that “We can’t trust him” was cover all along to avoid the discomfort of counting the cost of helping to defeat Trump and elect Clinton.

There can be no more assurance to be given than has been given, and a lot has been given.

First, the notion that McConnell is going to block a Trump nominee — unless it’s an actual leftist with an actual leftist track record — is a joke. I say that as someone who told you that McConnell would block Merrick Garland as long as Obama is President. A lot of you didn’t believe me, but I was right about that — and I’m right to say that he isn’t going to block any Trump nominee.

But, to address Hugh’s next point, if McConnell tried, the idea that Trump would acquiesce because he promised to on the Hugh Hewitt show is also a joke. The problem with this is that it assumes Trump’s word is worth something. If McConnell blocked a Trump nominee, Trump would scream to high Heaven and claim the system is rigged. He would deny that he ever said otherwise on Hewitt’s show.

Hugh says: “There can be no more assurance to be given than has been given, and a lot has been given.” Well, sure. More assurance could be given. You could get assurance from someone whose word actually means something. But we don’t have such a person this cycle. So we’re left with a lot of gum-flapping.

P.S. Hugh also seems confused about what the alt-right is. Any time these guys become aware of my existence on Twitter, they unleash a barrage of Neo-Nazi Stormfront garbage. Hugh seems to think of them as purely anti-Establishment folks. His confusion is so great that he actually labeled Ben Shapiro a member of the alt-right on his show — which he now admits, in his column linked above, was a mistake — when Shapiro is, in fact, one of the key targets of this collection of troglodytes.

The mainstreaming of these people is one of the worst aspects of Trumpism.


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