Gun Researcher's SCOTUS Litmus Test Is Perfect, Pick the Person Dems Hate Most
Ever since it was announced that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy would be retiring from his seat on the high court, Democrats and the liberal media have exploded with apocalyptic hyperbole about potential future court rulings.
That is because Kennedy’s replacement will be chosen by President Donald Trump and confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate, and Democrats know that the eventual nominee — whoever it may be — will most likely be ideologically opposed to their progressive agenda.
But as talk of potential nominees circulate through the media and each one is portrayed as perhaps the worst possible jurist ever in the history of the court system, it can become easy to get lost in all of the various analysis and opinions that most people use to inform their decisions as to how they will view those potential nominees.
However, one rather simple rule of thumb has been proposed by preeminent statistician and gun-rights researcher John Lott, writing in Townhall, that should make the process of whittling down the potential nominees to find the best future justice a relative breeze.
“Here is a simple rule: You can judge the caliber of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee by how angry the Democrats get,” Lott wrote.
Indeed, the angrier and more outraged liberals are by a potential nominee, the better that potential nominee will likely be as a sitting justice on the court.
“The smarter and more influential the nominee, in an important sense the more qualified they are, the angrier Democrats will get,” according to Lott.
Lott looked back at all of the nominees for the Supreme Court who have been put forward by various presidents over the past several decades, and he discovered the smartest and most achieved judges were the ones who endured the lengthiest confirmation processes.
Lott surmised that the increased opposition to incredibly smart nominees stemmed from the same sort of sentiment that often sees lawyers dismiss and excuse incredibly smart potential jurors, out of concern that they may be capable of influencing the opinions of others around them.
To wit, Democrats don’t want to see a smart and successful conservative originalist jurist on the Supreme Court because they may prove effective at swaying their colleagues to adopt their conservative constitutionalist positions.
Instead, Democrats would prefer potential jurists be of the “dumbed down” variety, as they would be more likely to defer to other justices already on the court and rulings from lower-court judges who have been on the bench for a while.
Thus, they fight tooth-and-nail against smart and successful Supreme Court nominees — just look at how hard Democrats fought against the nomination of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch — and how they really didn’t fight all that hard against nominees viewed as less intelligent or successful, such as Harriet Miers.
Lott said it makes sense from a partisan point of view for political parties to staunchly oppose the best and brightest nominees put forward by their opponents, but insisted that the current complexity of the laws seemingly required that only the best and brightest — no matter their ideological alignment — would be capable of performing adequately as a Supreme Court justice.
“Democrats will claim that they’re simply upset about the views of Trump’s forthcoming nominee, but what really worries them is the intelligence or influence of the pick,” Lott concluded.
To be sure, there will be much ado about the eventual nominee’s stance on abortion, gun rights, the power of the administrative state and a host of other issues, but in truth the opposition to that nominee will be less about the actual issues and more about their ability to be an influence instead of being influenced.
So, as the handful of potential Supreme Court nominees are discussed among the many analysts and pundits in the liberal media, look for the one who freaks the left out the most, and there you will quite likely find the best candidate overall for the job.
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