On his radio show this week, conservative superstar Mark Levin took the occasion of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement to remind his listeners that, had it been left up to the legions of “NeverTrump” Republicans who dotted the landscape in 2016, we would have handed Hillary Clinton two Supreme Court nominees and ruined the nation’s highest court for a generation or more.
“You realize that if the Never-Trumpers had had their way,” Levin said Wednesday, “Hillary Clinton would be making these decisions today. We wouldn’t have Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. Wouldn’t be discussing the possible constitutionalists that Donald Trump will nominate. The damage would be irreparable.”
Levin said it was important to remind the NeverTrump crowd of what they nearly did to the country.
“Some of them now pretend that they weren’t,” he said. “That in the general election, they pretend that they did in fact vote for Trump or they’re hushed about the fact that they didn’t vote for Trump. They should be called out for this, this is a big deal. And one of the things that Donald Trump, the would-be president, did is put this list together. And it still didn’t persuade the NeverTrumpers to support him for president. Pretty incredible.”
Levin was far from the only conservative pundit making the point. On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said that Republicans who opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump should “admit how wrong” they were in light of the fact that Trump will now have a chance to truly change the course of the Supreme Court for years.
“I have a message for you, he said. “Hillary Clinton would now be making a second appointment in terms of the judicial courts of American history.”
Even that might be understating the case, because if Hillary had won, Ruth Bader Ginsberg would have likely felt confident retiring as well. Assuming that Kennedy would have made the same choice, that would have actually given Hillary THREE Supreme Court nominations…and that’s only if we count on the Court staying stable for the rest of Trump’s term. The lengths to which a liberal Supreme Court could destroy the institutions of law and order in this country cannot be overstated. We would no longer be tied – even tangentially – to the U.S. Constitution. We would be living under the fabled “living Constitution,” which is to say: Under the whims of liberal ideology. Utter disaster.
That’s what the NeverTrump Republicans tried to saddle us with. Levin is right – it should not be forgotten.
