Article by allahpundit in HotAir
Newsmax host: Is Breyer's retirement the way Hillary ends up as president?
In fairness to Grant Stinchfield, this is only the second-craziest succession scheme I’ve seen in the past 24 hours. Take a bow, Nikki Haley:
If Joe Biden loved our country, he would step down and take Kamala Harris with him because the foreign and domestic policy situation is beyond dangerous at this point.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 27, 2022
Forced to choose between President Biden and President Pelosi, I’ll stick with Sleepy Joe.
But we need to be fair to Haley too. She’s not seriously suggesting that Biden and Harris resign. She’s just forever thirsty for ways to ingratiate herself to the MAGA base and thinks that talking like this, plainly insincerely, might do it.
Stinchfield is serious. As serious as a Newsmax host can be, anyway.
Newsmax host speculates that Stephen Breyer's retirement is part of a plot to install Hillary Clinton as president
(Seriously, I'm not making this up. Watch for yourself) pic.twitter.com/s6SzNsmulJ
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) January 27, 2022
There’s been a strange fascination among righties in the past 24 hours with theories that Biden is going to punt Harris over to the Supreme Court, clearing the way for some more nefarious figure to replace her as vice president. There were conspiracies theories like that before the election too — except they ran the other way. Some speculated that the Biden/Harris ticket was an orchestrated bait-and-switch in which the electable “moderate” at the top of the ticket would be removed shortly after his inauguration by his cabinet on 25th Amendment grounds, giving us four years of far-left President Harris.
Hasn’t happened. Justice Harris isn’t going to happen either. Although righty media outlets like Newsmax and Fox were pretty excited about the possibility yesterday:
Fox News floats a theory that Biden is going to remove Kamala Harris as vice-president and place her on the Supreme Court.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 26, 2022
"I can't be the only person who is seeing this," Harris Faulkner says.
" I think it’s a theory that could be credible," Kayleigh McEnany adds. pic.twitter.com/5V28LsxiZg
Hillary had better live forever. I don’t know what we’ll do without her once she’s unavailable to be a boogeyman anymore.
I explained last night why Biden can’t solve his Harris problem by appointing her to another position: Given all the bad press she’s had, the move would reek of a demotion. African-American voters, whom Biden’s trying to impress with his Court pick, might feel slighted. That’s especially true if Harris’s eventual replacement as VP wasn’t black. The perception would be that Democrats believe there’s room enough in the upper echelons of the federal government for only one black woman at a time. Why can’t America have a black woman vice president and a black woman Supreme Court justice?
If you don’t believe me, though, believe Charles Cooke. Harris isn’t going to the Court.
The idea is a joke, a reverie, a distraction. Harris has none of the qualifications for the job; she has none of the support she’d need to get there; and, as even her most ardent fans must by now intuit, her elevation would be a disaster for her own side. That President Biden has attached himself to such an anvil may be plausibly regarded as a misfortune. To attach himself twice would look like carelessness.
As for the agreement of the Senate? Fuggedaboutit. The case in favor is that the Democrats — even Biden himself — are desperate to get rid of her. But the Supreme Court is for life, not for Christmas. At this rate, Democrats will be rid of Kamala Harris in just under three excruciating years. If, by contrast, she were to be parachuted onto the Supreme Court, she would blot their escutcheon for life. If you want a picture of a future in which Harris is wearing a black robe, imagine a cackling mediocrity dissenting fruitlessly from the bench — forever.
Eh, I don’t know. Harris can do less damage to her party secreted away in an office at the Supreme Court, consigned to the liberal minority for years to come, then she can by continuing to give cringeworthy interviews and leaving Democrats agonizing over how to avoid nominating her in 2024 if Biden doesn’t run. I think Senate Dems would look forward to confirming her for the same reason Senate Republicans would have looked forward to confirming Ted Cruz as a SCOTUS nominee under Trump, freeing the party from an unpopular figure by removing that person from workaday politics.
Plus, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have spent enough time being called racists over the past month that they’d likely rubber-stamp Harris just to get progressives off their backs.
If Biden did nominate her, though, it’s a cinch that Hillary wouldn’t be his choice for VP. For one thing, he wouldn’t want to be overshadowed by his number two. Restoring the Clintons to the White House would do that. For another thing, Democrats’ 2024 calculations will be heavily influenced by the prospect of a grudge match with Trump, who gives every indication of running again. Hillary has the distinction of being the only Democrat in America who already has lost a national election to Trump. So why the hell would Biden want to saddle Democrats with her baggage when he could choose, say, Jon Tester as VP and position him to run as a rural-friendly electable centrist Dem in 2024? It makes no sense.
But it’s good copy, I’ll give the populists that.
I’ll leave you with this. Harris will have a role in the Supreme Court process but it won’t be as nominee.
Biden says that Kamala Harris, "an exceptional lawyer," will advise him in the decision on who to nominate to the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/feRJhehKNk
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 27, 2022
