So said the headline to last night’s DRUDGE REPORT, as President Trump is expected to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court later today. I am delighted with the pick, and despite the fact that this adds fuel to the fire, I believe we have no reason not to quickly confirm Mrs. Barrett.

The central public question right now is should we have a vote on a Supreme Court candidate this close to an election. Not surprisingly, the Republicans say yes and the Democrats say no. The Democrats are especially bitter that they were not allowed to confirm (or even vote) on Mr. Obama’s election year pick in 2016, Merrick Garland, and say hypocrisy! Each side makes their distinctions as to why this case is different, and I find Mitch McConnell’s the most compelling: he asserts (then and now) that when there is a difference in control of the Senate and the Presidency, in an election year, that the people should decide. The reason I find this compelling is the pragmatic and historical reality is that’s the way its almost always been done, not that there is a principle that says we should follow this. In both 2016 and now 2020, the Constitution is being followed: upon a vacancy in the Supreme Court, the president nominates (or not) and the Senate confirms (or not). Neither branch of government can force the other side not to act–in 2016 the Republicans could not stop Mr. Obama’s nomination of Mr. Garland, nor could he force the Republican senate’s action. But today we do not have divided government, and there is no plausible scenario that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party would not seize this opportunity when available. Yet there are compelling cases to be made by people I respect that say we should refrain. Peggy Noonan, in her usual thoughtful way, puts it like this:

Hold off, lower the temperature. It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, held for 27 years by a liberal icon of the court. In a great and varied nation of 330 million people some tact is in order, some give, some deference to what is important to others. We won’t survive otherwise. The presidential election is in a matter of weeks. The kind of judge Donald Trump and Joe Biden would choose will be very different, we all know this. Let the people decide, and accept outcomes. A Trump Republican might say, “The other side would never do that for us!” That is completely true. But someone’s got to think about the larger project, which is trying to keep the country together when a million forces are tearing it apart.

I understand that argument, and yet I can’t imagine that doing what she suggests will actually lower the temperature. Further, the Republicans do have a strong claim Mr. Trump ran on this issue in 2016 precisely to do just this–indeed, pretty much all conservatives that held their nose and voted for Mr. Trump as the lessor of two evils would primarily point to the consequences of Mrs. Clinton’s possible court appointees as their rationale. Further, the Democratic Party’s unconscionable treatment of Mr. Kavanaugh in the fall of 2018 had–to some degree–electoral backlash from voters as they repudiated several Democratic Senators who voted against Mr. Kavanaugh, and Republicans actually gained seats in 2018. So to say to the voters of 2016 (for Mr. Trump) and the voters of 2018 (for a Republican Senate) that their votes and priorities don’t count–only if they win again can it count–seems to me to be unreasonable. Further, the open Democratic suggestion that when the Supreme Court trends against them that they will pack the court, and that now (after securing unconstitutional after unconstitutional wins) that we’ll lock them in by having term limits so what we’ve dished out won’t come back to haunt us, makes clear that there is no limiting principle that they will abide by, e.g., there is no doubt that the filibuster is gone once the Democrats resume power. Finally, the Democrat’s call that the people should have a voice in this is particularly galling, as the principle that they are pursuing for the last 100 years or so is that of a living constitution, where the constitution means not necessarily what is written, but what the justices say it means. In every controversial social issue we’ve had over my lifetime, its been the unelected judiciary inflicting on the citizens what the proponents of said policy could not achieve via the Democratic process in the legislative branch. How many popular referendums on marriage were overturned by the Courts? The Democratic elites sneer at democratic outcomes–which is precisely why the courts and especially the Supreme Court has such an outsized role in our lives.

So on to the current situation. Mark Caleb Smith is obviously the political observer, but it seems hard for me to see how this nomination is not politically necessary for the Republicans. This is what they were elected to do, they have the opportunity, and now they must do it. Even if this were to motivate more Democratic base voters, and even if this does result in Democrats completely politicizing the Supreme Court (by packing it, which would invariably mean a new court with every transfer of political power in the future), they should do it. Republicans can’t control what their opponents might do, they should concern themselves with fidelity to what they were clearly elected to do. The blow to the Republican base that when they are on the cusp of potentially ending the monstrous Roe V Wade would be monumentally discouraging. As Mr. Obama famously said, elections have consequences. In my mind how this plays out in the upcoming election (given we are going to go through the confirmation process) is who has more self-discipline. We know that neither Mr. Trump nor the progressive wing can constrain their tongues. If the Democrats are so foolish as to replay the 2018 fiasco of Mr. Kavanaugh, this will be a boon to Republicans. Should they not succumb to the temptation to destroy Mrs. Barrett, but instead argue that the Republicans are afraid to face the voters, that they are hypocrites in search of only power, then they’ll do better. For Republicans, Mitch McConnell needs to encourage Mr. Trump to simply step back and leave it to him–the less said by President Trump on the specifics, the better. Mr Trump need only say, “promises made, promises kept.”