Krauthammer’s Take: Trump’s SCOTUS List Will Have ‘Dramatic Effect’ on Conservatives

by NR Staff

Charles Krauthammer analyzes Donald Trump’s release of a list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court:

I think it will have a dramatic effect [on Republicans]. The one thing holding back people from resisting Trump — or at least the major thing — is the fear of what a Clinton presidency would do to the Supreme Court. And how it would change it for a generation.

Now you get a list of eleven [potential nominees] who are quite sterling, three of them clerked for Justice Thomas, two of them for Justice Scalia, the six federal judges all appointed by George W. [Bush], which means they are conservative and they are relatively young — so this is a future-looking list.

The only caveat, is what you and I heard . . . where Trump said his nominee will ‘most likely be from this list.’ Not ‘going to be,’ but ‘will most likely be.’ How do you interpret that? I don’t know. He always leaves himself wiggle room, he says he likes to have leverage. He keeps the leverage but he kindles a little bit of doubt. . . . 

By doing something like this to assuage conservatives, he gives cover, he allows some conservatives to come out and support him and say, ‘well I’m not so worried as much about the Supreme Court.’ It starts this cascade of who is going to support Trump.

And once that starts — it’s not going to stop.

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Mrs. Trump Deserves Some Sympathy

by Ramesh Ponnuru

There has been a fair amount of snickering over Melania Trump’s comment that her husband is “not Hitler.” Yes, that’s a low bar; yes, it usually goes without saying that one’s spouse has cleared it. But remember: She was asked about the claim that her husband is Hitler. Maybe she should have been clever enough to avoid repeating the accusation in her own comment, or just said that the accusation is ridiculous and offensive. In that case, nobody would have made fun of her comment.

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Two Must-Read Pieces on the High Cost of Sexual License

by David French

The first — in The Federalist — is by a self-described gay conservative Democrat who supports gay marriage, and he is unhappy with gay culture:

The problem is that the entire milieu in which gay men’s moral and sexual socialization takes place is so deeply compromised, so bereft of sustainable meaning and protracted monogamous commitment, that marriage in the traditional sense (which is what I believe gay men are trying to achieve in their lives) will be impossible to realize.

And:

Promiscuous sex and drug use are not exceptional or marginalized currents in gay culture. They are an omnipresent force in every register, crook, and cranny of the gay world. The new and disturbing “Poz Me” trend merging in gay culture needs to be nationally discussed. This culture consists in underground online sites where gay men who are HIV negative hook up with men who are not and beg to be “breeded” by HIV-positive men.

I’d urge you to read the entire thing. It’s an unsparing, uncompromising look at a culture in which “43 percent of all gay men in Western democracies claimed to have had more than 500 partners in their lifetime, and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000.” In other words, men are giving in to their desires without restraint, and the result isn’t so much joy and fulfillment as it is loneliness and desperation.

The second piece is in Middlebury Magazine. Written by recent graduate Leah Fessler, it chronicles her own adventures in college hookup culture and her own efforts to study its effects. She found herself “frustrated” that she couldn’t embrace “anti-monogamous ideals,” and — even worse — she discovered that hookup culture hurt. Speaking of one “friend with benefits” she says this:

During the spring of my junior year, I met up with a boy every weekend night. I’d convinced myself that our conversations about Nietzsche meant we were developing something, only to learn months later he “didn’t think of me as a human being when we were hooking up.” My friend Jen (all names have been changed to preserve anonymity) was excited about a boy she’d been seeing for several months until she learned he was also seeing three other girls. Another friend spoke of a guy she’d hooked up with for a semester: he told her he could be “90 percent committed to her . . . just in case something happens, and I want to see someone else.”

While these pseudo-breakups hurt, they weren’t breakups, and that’s what made them so troublesome. Really we only lost the physical nature of the relationship, which we’d attempted to convince ourselves—as our culture regulated—we liked. Worse, we were hiding this guy-related stress, ashamed that such “meaningless” experiences could shake our emotional stability.

Curious about her classmates’ experiences, she decided to conduct a survey. The results were clear:

After interviewing 75 students and analyzing 314 online surveys, I was astounded by female students’ unanimous preferences not for the hookup culture—but against it. Despite having diverse initial perceptions about hookup culture, 100 percent of female interviewees stated a clear preference for committed relationships. And 74 percent of female survey respondents reported that, ideally, they would be in a “committed relationship with one person” at Middlebury.

Further, 91 percent of female respondents presently in a committed relationship with a Middlebury student (or alum) reported to be “very happy” or “happy” with their situation, while a whopping zero percent of those consistently sexually engaged with one person—but who haven’t discussed their exclusivity—said that they are “very happy.” (Eight percent are “happy.”) And fewer than 20 percent of single and sexually disengaged female respondents said they were “happy” with their situation. Only about 35 percent of female respondents (and 44 percent of male respondents) find noncommittal sexual engagements fulfilling in the moment and feel fine about them later. The rest are generally dissatisfied.

Desire-driven “consent morality” is doing grave damage. Indulging in sexual desire without considering the underlying virtue of the relationship or the morality of the desire itself is a recipe for human suffering — leading to the paradox where many of the most sexually-active people are the most heartbroken and most lonely.

For those who understand biblical truth, the notion of slavery to sin is hardly new — and it turns out that redefining sin as freedom doesn’t make the slavery or sorrow any less real. 

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Can Trump Be Trusted on the Courts?

by Ramesh Ponnuru

The question with which John Yoo ends his post is the crucial one. Trump’s list of judges is a good one–but could he be trusted to actually nominate people like that to the federal courts?

Ordinarily Republican presidential candidates do not release such lists. Instead they say they will nominate judicial conservatives, publish white papers explaining the qualities they seek in judges (including the judicial philosophies they seek), and name a conservative justice or two that they admire. Trump released this list precisely because conservatives trust him less than the average Republican politician on this issue.

Why is he trusted less? First, because he has done less than most Republican politicians to demonstrate any commitment to the mainstream conservative view of the courts, the Constitution, and the judiciary. Second, because his lack of basic knowledge about the courts–e.g., his reference to judges’ “signing bills”–suggests that making solid judicial appointments is not a priority for him. Third, because when he has discussed constitutional issues–such as eminent domain and free speech–his views have been the opposite of those of most judicial conservatives. Fourth, because he often says he wants to make deals and that conservatism is a second-order concern for him, and making deals with the Democrats on judges would preclude fighting for judicial conservatives. (Trump’s interest in getting conservative judges on the bench is in doubt; the Democrats’ interest in blocking them is not.) Fifth, because he has frequently broken his word and casually abandoned his previously stated positions. 

The likelihood that Trump, as president, would appoint conservative judges is at least a little higher now that he has released this list. But it remains the case that to get conservatives on the bench, a President Trump would have to be willing to fight hard and take political risks for principles he has never shown much sign of caring about.

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The Meaning of a Flag

by Jay Nordlinger

In my “Prague Journal” today, I have an item about a ceremony or rally I came across: to mark the end of World War II. It was largely a Communist rally, replete with hammers and sickles and red stars. But there was a symbol I did not recognize: an orange and black striped flag. Several people were waving them.

My colleague Mike Potemra has identified the flag: the flag of the ribbon of Saint George. I will quote to you from the relevant Wikipedia entry:

… a widely recognized military symbol in Russia. …

During Soviet times, the ribbon held no public significance. The symbol was revived in Russia in 2005 as a response to the pro-democratic Orange Revolution in Ukraine. …

In Ukraine and the Baltic states …, the symbol has become widely associated with Russian nationalist and separatist sentiment.

There go the beaux esprits again, se rencontrent-ing their butts off.

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Three Thoughts on Donald Trump’s Supreme Court List

by Dan McLaughlin

Donald Trump released a list of eleven potential Supreme Court nominees today, and as Jim Geraghty notes, if you take the list at face value, it’s a good one, with a number of solid conservative names on it. The list is mostly cribbed from a prior Heritage Foundation list and from names fed to Trump by Hugh Hewitt in a radio interview, and is heavy on state supreme court judges. It obviously is not the product of much due diligence, as it includes Twitter-savvy Texas supreme court justice Don Willett, who has repeatedly and hilariously mocked Trump on Twitter for months. Instead, the timing of the list’s release smacks of desperate pandering to conservatives, coming on the heels of a new poll that suggests an opening for a third-party candidate to scoop up conservatives and others disaffected by a Trump-Hillary matchup. Whether you believe Trump actually means any of this probably depends on your opinions of him already. Three quick thoughts on the list:

First, if anything, the buzz over this list is a sign of how infrequently Trump has attempted to appeal to Republican voters by doing the sorts of things that would normally be second nature to a Republican presidential candidate. A candidate like Ted Cruz or even Mitt Romney releasing a list like this would barely have been news, nor in the case of Cruz or Marco Rubio would it even have been necessary. Trump’s general-election strategy so far has been to make overtures to Bernie Sanders voters — scrapping his tax-cut plan, insisting he supports a federal minimum-wage hike, talking up the idea that Bernie is getting a raw deal in the Democratic primary, touting an Obama-style plan for peace talks with Kim Jong Un. One of the hallmarks of a losing general-election candidate is needing to spend lots of time shoring up his own party base after the primaries are over, and Trump seems only belatedly to be coming to the realization that he might have to do that. Thus far, he has actually been making it easier, rather than harder, for conservatives to justify opposing him in the general election — along with yesterday’s promise to scrap Dodd-Frank (a favorite target of GOP donors’ ire), this is the first thing he has done in months that goes in the opposite direction. It seems amazing that the Republican presidential nominee is only realizing, in mid May, how important the Supreme Court is to many Republican voters. But it may not be coincidental that Trump is feeling pressure to throw a bone to more conventional Republican priorities now that he actually has to raise significant amounts of money from the party’s donor base and needs to work through the party’s infrastructure to do so.

Second, it’s interesting to consider who the people on the list are connected to. Willett was appointed by Rick Perry, who has come out in support of Trump after fiercely resisting him throughout the primaries. Eleventh Circuit judge Bill Pryor is an ally of Jeff Sessions, one of Trump’s few vocal supporters in the Senate, and was (like Sessions himself in an earlier era) the subject of a high-profile confirmation battle under George W. Bush. But it also includes Utah supreme court judge Thomas Lee, the brother of conservative senator and Ted Cruz ally Mike Lee, as well as Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Sykes, the ex-wife of Wisconsin talk-radio host and prominent “Never Trump” figure Charlie Sykes. (Judge Sykes was frequently mentioned on the short lists for the Supreme Court vacancies ultimately filled by John Roberts and Samuel Alito). The presence of Lee and Sykes on the list suggests that whoever wrote it up was either trolling or trying some fairly targeted pandering.

Third, the list has one glaring absence: Ted Cruz. Cruz has said that he doesn’t want to be on the Court, but that would not stop a savvy GOP nominee from floating his name and trying, when elected, to convince him to take the job. Naming Cruz would have five benefits. One, it would be a sop to his supporters, many of them still licking their wounds from the primary. Two, it would show a measure of grace and desire for party unity, unlike the “you’ll get nothing and like it!” message Trump has thus far mostly been selling to the 60 percent of the party who voted against him. Three, few things would endear Trump more to GOP Establishment Senators than the prospect of being rid of Ted Cruz. Four, if Trump actually won the election, Cruz would inevitably become the leader of the intra-party opposition and a constant thorn in President Trump’s side. And five, Cruz would also be the most likely person willing and able to challenge Trump in a 2020 primary. The fact that Trump didn’t include him on the list suggests either petty vindictiveness, a lack of political foresight, or perhaps simply that even Trump doesn’t envision a scenario where Donald Trump is the president in 2017.

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Governor Ehrlich and the Present Pass

by Jay Nordlinger

Readers of National Review are well familiar with Bob Ehrlich, who was governor of Maryland in the 2000s. He is one of my favorite politicians — one of my favorite people. His latest book is Turning Point: Picking Up the Pieces After Eight Years of Failed Progressive Policies. And he is my guest on a new Q&A.

What do we talk about? Well, “where we’re at”: after eight years of Obama, and at the beginning of a race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It is not a happy time for Reagan Republicans, as Ehrlich is and as I am. But I always feel buoyed when I talk to him. He has a fighting spirit, a keen mind, and an abiding patriotism.

Again, that podcast is here. And where does Ehrlich stand on the Great Trump Divide? He is supporting him. He thinks his election is important. If there is a Trump administration, it could do worse than to have Bob Ehrlich in it. A lot worse.

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Trump’s Judicial Appoints List Is Filled with Outstanding Conservatives

by John Yoo

I still don’t believe Trump is a conservative on domestic policy or responsible enough to lead our nation’s foreign policy. But he may be starting to unify the party with the right moves — if his list of potential appointments to the Supreme Court is any sign.

Everyone on the list is an outstanding legal conservative. All are young, smart, and committed. They would excel in any comparison with anyone whom Hillary Clinton would appoint to the Supreme Court. Several of the possibilities, such as Tom Lee of Utah, Allison Eid of Colorado, and David Stras of Minnesota, are former law clerks of Justice Clarence Thomas, while others, such as Steve Colloton of Iowa and Joan Larsen of Michigan, clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. They are joined by other well-known judicial conservatives, such as Diane Sykes, Don Willet, Ray Kethledge, and Bill Pryor.

These names are a Federalist Society all-star list of conservative jurisprudence. In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that I count several of them as colleagues and friends. It is a good sign that, on one of a president’s most important decisions, Trump clearly turned to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation for advice.

Interestingly, despite his anti-Bush rhetoric, Trump also owes a debt to the Bush administration: Many of the Trump possibilities were appointed by Bush or held positions in his administration. While the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic policies remain a source of debate for Republicans today, conservatives agree that most of Bush’s judicial appointments were stellar.

The other promising sign is that Trump’s advisers have looked beyond the lower federal courts to include potential nominees from state supreme courts. State supreme-court justices will have special sensitivity to the balance between federal power and state sovereignty. Many have run for office and already know what it is like to be attacked by the Left. They may prove more immune to the pressure from the New York-Washington liberal media/academic elite that has managed to sway Justice Anthony Kennedy and other Republican appointees.

It also doesn’t hurt that many of the possibilities are from battleground states in the coming November elections. Trump’s team clearly respects the voters in Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, Michigan, and Texas, where he has named state supreme-court justices who have run for election.

I am thrilled by this list. But that being said, I cannot trust Trump to keep his word. He has already flip-flopped on so many issues, before, during, and after the primary campaign. How do we know he would not start wheeling and dealing on judicial appointments if he were to win the Oval Office?

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