IN ARIZONA, UNELECTED JUDGES LEGISLATE FROM THE BENCH

See how this works?

Phoenix, Arizona - Yesterday, in an astonishing turn of events, four members of the Arizona Supreme Court appeared from the year 1864 and outlawed abortion. Despite not yet being a state when enacted, four conservative justices ruled the law was still on the books and gave two weeks for enforcement to begin.

There’s the ‘originalist’ philosophy of judicial review, that is, we should interpret a foundational document’s words to determine modern issues.

In Arizona, they went for the “Big Bang Theory” of jurisprudence; ruling that statutes from before the before time still had the force of law, 160 years later.

For years, nay decades, conservatives have decried “unelected judges legislating from the bench.” Not surprisingly, not now anyway, most of their upset was rooted in opposition to any sort of social progress or equality.

A quick rundown of consequential cases and how #UltraMAGA nuts would have felt about them…

They would have cheered Dred Scott.

They would have been 100% Plessy v. Ferguson (codified ‘seperate but equal’.)

They love Citizens United.

They love the recent IVF decision out of Alabama.

They would’ve hated the New Deal.

They would have really hated Loving v. Virginia (except Clarence Thomas.)

They hated Brown v. Board of Education.

They hated Roe v. Wade (but only after they ran out of everything else to extract money and votes from their followers.)

Trump and Abortion

Just 24 hours before the Arizona decision was handed down, Donald Trump gave an incoherent statement on the abortion issue, being poll-tested to within an inch of his life. His were “words told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“Leave it to the states,” was the bottom line. NEWSFLASH: THAT’S DOBBS!

Then, because Karma is sometimes just the best, 24 hours later, the Arizona Supreme Court gave Trump exactly what he asked for; an abortion decision decided at the state level.

Now at Mar-A-Lago they’re trying to figure out what to do next. As I wrote previously, on this issue and others, Trump is stuck between an unstoppable force (American voters) and an immovable object (white Christian evangelicals.) He was trying to thread the needle on abortion but will push both hardcore abortion voters and moderate Republicans and independents away from him.

Flips and Flops and Flips…

Two years ago, Kari Lake (R-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) said in public, and on camera, that she was hoping that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe and the Arizona court would subsequently reinstate the 1864 law outlawing the procedure.

Voila! Kari got her wish.

Now, though, she’s opposed to the ruling. In the height of nihilism, cyncism, and hypocrisy, Lake referred to herself as the only ‘woman and mother’ in Arizona’s US Senate race. Whaaaatttt???

Arizona’s two vulnerable Republican US House members both said the ruling was wrong. Rep. Dave Schweikert demanded the Arizona legislature “address this issue immediately.”

First, high irony (I know it’s dead) for an obstructionist US House member to demand anything of another legislative body. Second, what would he have them decide on? Republicans are caught out because they don’t even understand the vampire they’ve invited into their home.

Who They Really Are

I can make an argument that Donald Trump is the cause of our massive political problems. In fact, he’s the by-product of decades of work by the likes of Leonard Leo and other arch-conservatives to create an American theocracy. They got lucky when Trump arrived and inhabited the empty husk that was the Republican Party.

Now, UltraMAGA is in charge, and it will cost Donald Trump the White House and Republicans across the country their seats in November. Trump’s days of riding the sandworm are at an end.

The true nuts have outpaced him and he’s faced with a Hobson’s Choice: Decry the insanity and lose when millions of voters stay home, or dive further into the abyss and watch millions of otherwise normal Americans pull the lever for Biden or leave the space blank.

Dog, Bumper, Repeat…

Two years ago when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision and conservative states outlawed abortion, pro-life advocates cheered. They’d won their decades-long fight. In the process, though, Republicans may well have opened the gates to their own political demise. The country isn’t where it was in 1973 (when most Americans, including the Southern Baptist Convention) agreed with the Roe ruling.

Fifty years on, the country is a vastly different place, and Americans and their culture have moved foward, as time and progress do. The Christian evangelical movement understood that the only way to curb progress was to capture the judiciary, which they’ve done. For them, though, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. They’ve won major battles, but in the end, will lose the war for America.

And thank God for it.