• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Let's point this out now

Craig234

DP Veteran
Joined
Apr 22, 2019
Messages
46,485
Reaction score
22,693
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Progressive
First, let's recognize the situation on the Supreme Court *social* ideology. Their key ideology - for plutocracy, for blocking the power of the people and their government to restrict the wealthy and powerful - is firmly entrenched and the reason they're there from billions being spent and the Republican Party's first or second priority being to put them there. This is about the secondary, social ideology.

For the last century, the key to understanding Republican electoral politics, besides its semi-hidden agenda for plutocracy and its weaponizing of propaganda, is how the election of FDR showed them that they cannot win honestly. That FDR and Democrats stomped them so thoroughly into the ground as being electable they have been desperate since about having ways to attract voters.

From the FDR era, who were you going to vote for, the Democrats who cared about the American people and fought for millions of jobs, protections for workers, created programs like Social Security and later Medicare, who were the declared opponents of the rich fat cats who wanted to exploit the American people - or the servants of those fat cats who had nothing but plutocracy to offer?

The first big example of what this caused with Republicans desperate to find a reason for Americans to vote for them was "the red scare", wild claims that Democrats allowed communists into the government who threatened to betray the country and make the US communist. Typical of Republican lies, it was idiotic and many fell for it, and Republicans got total control in 1952.

I won't make this longer with a lot of examples, but they refined this with issue after issue, and the relevant one for this post we're getting to is abortion.

Support for abortion rights gradually increased through the 1960's. The rich had access. JFK was able to refer a young mistress to a helping doctor when a false alarm for pregnancy happened. By the late 60's some states began to legalize abortion. Governor Ronald Reagan signed a bill making California the third state to increase access to abortions. In 1973, Roe v. Wade was issued.

For years, it was just 'progress'. There was some controversy, but it wasn't a big political issue. the Southern Baptist Convention repeatedly issued declarations supporting the right to abortion in the 70's after the ruling. Running for President in 1980, Reagan in a speech to evangelicals didn't mention abortion, but he did mention they should have the right to racial segregation.

What changed was that quickly as president, Reagan recognized evangelicals - who had a history of supporting liberal values like caring for the poor - as an opportunity for Republicans to win them over for votes, much as Republicans had won over the south after Democrats led the civil rights laws.

Reagan quickly found the issues evangelicals cared about, and developed a partnership with the new "Moral Majority" led by Jerry Falwell, beginning the strong pursuit of making Evangelical Americans into Republican voters. Quickly supporting overturning Roe v. Wade became a requirement for Republican politicians and a crusade for Reagan.
 
And the only way to overturn Roe, to tell Evangelical voters they'd keep that promise, was if the Supreme Court reversed the ruling, and so Republicans wanted to appoint Justices who would. Lawyers wanting to get to the Supreme Court through a Republican knew full well that two requirements were to quietly support plutocracy - the real issue - and to also discreetly be seen as a Justice who would overturn Roe.

Republicans weren't always that good at picking the 'right' Justices; some didn't always rule how they wanted. But the creation of the Federalist Society helped with that, creating an army of reliable lawyers for judicial and other legal positions groomed for years.

In the history of the Supreme Court, with over 100 Justices, there have not been many Catholics - a total of from 13 to 15, from differing sources. Seven of the nine current Justices are Catholic (one 'Anglican/Catholic), including all of the Republicans. (The other two are Jewish, with a historically Protestant institution now having none except the one Anglican/Catholic).

And so, that's what we have. A court dominated in numbers by people groomed for decades to be plutocrats by the Federalist Society, and selected from THAT group as people who would overturn Roe v. Wade - trump speaking the quiet part out loud promising all his three appointees would which they did - so they also have social ideologies fitting right-wing Catholic views.

Now, they have just exercised their power in numbers for the biggest power play on the court this century, with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Republican electoral mission, the result of its recruiting Evangelical voters so it could win elections, completed.

Then there's a question, the question for this thread.

Having adopted a legal position that unenumerated rights don't exist, that the Court's earlier rulings Roe was based on by finding those unenumerated rights were wrong and now overturned, what happens to the other rights the court has protected based on those unenumerated rights?

Politically, Republicans are falling all over themselves to claim that abortion is the only right that's going to be affected - the court is done now. I just watched, for example, the head of the Republican Governor's Association, As Hutchinson, sputtering wildly how no other right is in any danger.

The ruling itself was just contradictory on this, eviscerating the legal position numerous rights are based on, while saying it's only being applied to abortion.
 
But Clarence Thomas, the most outspokenly, sometimes seemingly crazed, of them did not restrain himself, and very reasonably stated, again the quiet part outload - that now having removed the foundation for all of those rights, rights to contraception, rights to same-sex relationships and marriage, should all be reversed (he used the phrase 'revisited' IIRC, which means reversed).

(Surprisingly, he left one off of his list, the right to inter-racial marriage. An oversight, no doubt).

Legal experts I've seen agree, that the court has left little option but to either reverse right after right, following the foundation it laid of rejecting the unenumerated underlying right used for all of those rights, or to be clearly hypocritical, picking and choosing how to apply its legal doctrines based on politics, leaving the rights untouched but without any legal foundation.

They predict that conservative groups will waste no time creating cases to overturn each of those other rights for the court.

So, what's reasonable to expect? That a court made of hand-picked Justices for views that include the right-wing Catholic social views will continue to flex its power and be consistent in its legal doctrine and overturn more rights with the same logic now that the 'hardest' one is done, as Thomas calls for; or that the Republican politicians making politically convenient claims before the mid-terms that it won't happen, trying to minimize the electoral harm from the ruling while having enjoy the benefits it has provided for decades, are right? After all, LOSING votes from the ruling would defeat the reason they arranged for it.

Such is the complexity of Republicans desperately seeking votes and voting blocks.

Getting benefits by pandering to a group, while losing votes from their opponents, hoping to maximize the turnout of the voters grateful to them and to minimize the votes lost from the backlash. What do think will happen - more rights reversed by this court, or that they'll only apply their legal doctrine to one right, leaving inconsistencies?
 
Back
Top Bottom