Analysis: GOP’s long-term Supreme Court strategy pays off
NEW YORK — Three years of political upheaval. Early morning Twitter blasts. Scores of startling headlines. For the Republican Party, all the chaos of the Trump era has been building toward a week like this.
The party’s long-term strategy to focus on the Supreme Court — highlighted by an audacious decision not to allow a vote in 2016 on President Barack Obama’s judicial pick — culminated this week with a series of conservative rulings and another vacancy. With Justice Anthony Kennedy set to retire at the end of next month, President Donald Trump is poised to appoint his second justice in as many years, giving conservatives a potential bulwark on the bench that could offset national demographic trends that appear set to favour Democrats in the decades ahead.
Though Trump, who has little fixed ideology, has been an unpredictable and at times frustrating governing partner for the Republican leadership, he has largely adhered to GOP orthodoxy when it comes to judicial appointments, including his selection of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court a year ago. And the president, in the moments after Kennedy’s retirement was announced, made clear that he understood the opportunity to shape the court for generations.
“It’s always been considered a tremendous — a tremendously important thing,” the president said at the White House on Wednesday. “Some people think outside of, obviously, war and peace, it’s the most important thing that you could have.”