We’ve now heard from the far-left wing of the Democratic Party and the more moderate wing, and the message is consistent: We should accede to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “final wish” — that a president other than Donald Trump name her successor. According to NPR:
Just days before her death, as her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
Putting aside the inescapable observation that that account is third-hand, as well as the reality that Clara Spera from all accounts is pretty hard-left, there is still that pesky Constitution to consider. “Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, also known as the Appointments Clause, empowers the president to nominate and, with the confirmation (advice and consent) of the United States Senate, appoint public officials, including justices of the Supreme Court.” [Emphasis added]
There is no mention in there of accommodating dying wishes, but that hasn’t stopped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from injecting a little of that empathy into the law that Barack Obama was so big on. Here she is painting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a heartless bastard “who does not care about a dying woman’s final wish”:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Spera, according to NPR, didn’t specify that it was Ginsburg’s final wish — uttered the instant before she shuffled off the mortal coil — but maybe I’m being picky. At any rate, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer followed suit, but he came equipped with hard data, revealing that 62% of Americans agree that RGB’s wishes should be honored. “She was an amazing woman,” he eulogizes in the video that follows, “and so the first reason we’re here is for unity and the second is to honor her legacy. To demand that her last wish be fulfilled by the Senate.”
I suggest we play along. Let’s indeed honor Justice Ginsburg’s wishes. But rather than go by hearsay, as the Dems prefer to do, let’s stick to the ones we have a record of. Let’s abide by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s own words. Here’s her opinion on packing the court to eliminate what Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder calls an “illegitimate conservative majority.”
RBG: “Bad idea when [FDR] tried to pack the court… If anything would make the court appear partisan it'd be…one side saying, ‘When we’re in power we’re going to enlarge the number of judges so we'll have more ppl who will vote the way we want them to.’"pic.twitter.com/e3vj0Mzo0K
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) September 19, 2020
As for leaving her seat open for the time being, there appears to be no video evidence of RGB in her own words, but a source that the Left regards as highly reliable offers up a useful quote from 2016:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday that having only eight justices “is not a good number for a multi-member court.”
The comments mark the furthest a sitting justice has gone, since the sudden death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year, to signal that the court would function better with a fully staffed bench.
