Jeff Flake: Merrick Garland's The Best SCOTUS Nominee We're Going To Get

by JASmius



This, you may recall, was the argument made by Leon Wolf at Red State last week that I shot down as losing the Senate now versus losing it in November.  Choosing the best of the worst isn't any appreciable improvement over the worst of the worst.  Worst IS worst.  It's picking your poison.  So why cooperate in the poisoning?

Apparently the junior senator from Arizona wasn't paying attention to me:

Republicans should approve the nomination to the Supreme Court of Merrick Garland if it becomes clear that the Democrats are going to win the presidential elections, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake told NBC's Meet the Press....

He went on to explain that "the principle is to have the most conservative, qualified jurist that we can have on the Supreme Court, not that the people should decide before the next election. But if we come to a point… where we're going to lose the election in November, then we ought to approve him quickly, because I'm certain he'll be more conservative than a Hillary Clinton nomination. [mephasis added]

"If"?  I think you can interpret that as "when"; Flake just isn't in a position to come right out and say it.  But if he hadn't seen the handwriting that the stubby fingers of the Trump nomination have scrawled on the metaphorical wall, would he really even be speculating about worst case scenarios in the first place?

What this tells me is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's vow of "No Garland hearings now, no Garland hearings EVER" may not hold no matter how steadfastly the Kentucky senior senator tries to hold the line because his caucus might just stampededly abandon him, spooked to panic by the Hillary Clinton Scarecrow.

Senator Flake, incidentally, is a #SkepticalOfTrumper:

Flake said that he would not be able to support presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump for president unless he moderated some of his views.

Well, on the one hand, by the time this farce of a campaign is mercifully over, the New York liberal conman will have pretty much held every view of every issue at least once simply by random quantum fluctuation.  On the other hand, that speaks to how nobody can trust a single solitary word that comes out of his gaping maw.  So I'm not sure if Senator Flake is actually #SkepticalOfTrump or if he's really #NeverTrump but is trying to walk that impossible tightrope even though he's not up for reelection this year.  Perhaps he feels like he's not in a position to come right out and say it, much like his "if, not when" hedging on the November election.

At any rate, I hope his hatches are battened down, because I've no doubt the blithering fire is already incoming.