Should Republicans Take the Long View on SCOTUS?
What Republicans can and should not do to force a win...
By Garrett Snedeker, TomKlingenstein.com (excerpt)
Three months into the Trump administration, Republicans are understandably frustrated by the relative lack of reaction from the Supreme Court to the proliferation of nationwide injunctions from the lower courts (many under spurious pretext) to Trump administration policies.
The Court is not immune to warranted criticism.
But we should be careful not to miss the forest for the trees…
The Supreme Court must prioritize the longer-term project of repairing the wreckage of the Warren and Burger eras with an originalist jurisprudence, debates about which flavor of originalism notwithstanding.
Contributing to the decline in the Court’s credibility could harm that long-term project in the interest of short-term gains.
The major challenge to the Court’s standing comes from the Left.
The Left has plumbed unprecedented depths to smear and harass the Republican-appointed justices on the Court over the past forty years.
These efforts seek simultaneously to delegitimize the Court in the eyes of the public and to intimidate justices into “moderating” toward the Left’s preferred positions.
Public polling bears this out.
The gap between Republican and Democratic favorability widened dramatically, from roughly equal views in 2020 (75% vs. 67%) to a 39-point gap in 2024 (63% vs. 24%).
The Court’s current favorability rating (47% in 2024) is among the lowest in nearly 4 decades, comparable to 2015 (48%), and far below norms from 20 years ago.
Of the 3 branches, the Supreme Court should be the branch least concerned with popularity.
However, it does rely somewhat on positive perception, which affects the extent to which the political branches follow its lead in their work.
With this in mind, how can Republicans navigate these troubled waters?
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