Expect a confirmation

Voters who do not want to be ruled by unelected judges want President Donald Trump to nominate and the Republican Senate to confirm the next Supreme Court justice.

If Democrats deploy outrageous delaying tactics such as conducting a sham impeachment— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied simply “we have our options” when asked about the possibility by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday—the Republican Senate majority should simply dispense with hearings and hold a vote.

History favors presidents filling such slots when their party controls the Senate. That Democrats are upset Trump gets to make another appointment to the court doesn’t change history or amend the Constitution.

The charge that Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are acting with extreme ruthlessness and hypocrisy, given their decision not to consider a Democratic president’s nominees in advance of the 2016 election, is particularly amusing. Democrats know how to use power when they have it, too.

Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) simply changed the Senate’s rules in 2013 when he wanted to jam President Barack Obama’s nominees onto the District of Columbia Circuit. Cries of fear over a rapidly spreading fire don’t count for much when it’s the arsonists doing the screaming.

On Saturday on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation,” former attorney general Eric Holder called on

Democrats to add seats to the Supreme Court, which has been fixed at nine since 1869, if this one seat is filled by Trump and the Senate GOP.

“Court packing” would be a fundamental assault on the stability of the republic, the sort of radical proposal that should make independent and moderate voters step back and shake their heads at what Trump Derangement Syndrome has done to the Democratic Party.

It is not the only radical proposal being pursued by many Democrats. The Green New Deal is an unhinged mess of slogans, and creating states from D.C. and Puerto Rico to add senators would be extreme steps on their own, as is the push for a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to overturn the electoral college. Democrats would have to end the Senate’s legislative filibuster to do these things, but that’s on the radicals’ agenda, too.

The names most often heard on Trump’s short list are all federal judges: Amy Coney Barrett, Allison Eid, Barbara Lagoa, Joan Larsen and Allison Jones Rushing. All are superbly qualified.

But the point is they are all qualified. The Constitution gives the president the power to nominate, the Republicans have the Senate majority, and history favors the majority party’s use of that power. The GOP also knows that its candidates are toast, and the party blown apart, if they allow themselves to be intimidated by Manhattan-Beltway media elites into failing to meet this challenge.

The good news is that McConnell and Graham know perfectly well that Twitter isn’t the country.

Expect fireworks, but also expect a confirmation.