Tonight President Trump will announce his pick to replace the retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy - or as Mark likes to call him - Supreme Intergalactic Arbiter Anthony Kennedy. With Mark away "on assignment", we wanted to share a few of his thoughts that are particularly topical today.
In August of 2015, Mark responded to a SteynOnline reader's critique of Trump that he's "not a conservative" and "our only recent Conservative President, Reagan, was the one who appointed Kennedy, who is far more Conservative than anyone Trump would appoint...." Here's a bit of what Mark had to say:
As Michael sees it, every single leading Republican of the last quarter-century has merely been "pretending to be a conservative" - which kind of makes my point. In that case, what difference does one more pretender make?
Well, Michael's problem is that Trump won't appoint "truly conservative justices". And by "truly conservative justices" he means Anthony Kennedy, who in the space of 48 hours constitutionalized Obamacare and gave us the first federally mandated marriage law in US history. That's not a very high bar to meet - and Trump could probably meet it if you filled the lobby of Trump Tower with 200 random judges and gave him a blindfold and a pin.
But here's the larger issue: there's nothing "conservative" about mortgaging your liberties to an omnipotent co-regency of lawyers. Americans got rid of a king who encroached far less on their liberties than Anthony Kennedy. What's the point of throwing off one bloke in an ermined robe for nine in basic black?
The final fallback argument for the Republican Party - okay, we got nothin' in 2010, and nothin' in 2014, but at least this time round we'll get maybe two or three terrific Supreme Court justices - is risible in its desperation and entirely implausible given the GOP appointments of the last 40 years. And believe me, when Kennedy was appointed, there were a lot more sane judges to pick from. Now it's wall-to-wall social justices. What "conservatives" need to do is rein in the Supremacist Court - which is nothing America's founders would recognize.
You can read the whole thing here. And, if you're a Mark Steyn Club member please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts or your picks for the Court in the comment section below. If you're not a member, we invite you to join here. And, if you're thinking of joining us for our cruise from Montreal to Boston this fall, now's the best time to reserve your cabin.