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[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Conservatives will say that the thing that kicked it off was that Democrats objected to Reagan trying to put an extremist like Bork on the Court.

The politicization of the Court mirrors the polarization of the parties. The GOP unified around the idea of remaking the Court with conservatives in the 80's, and it has been one of the most important issues for movement conservatives since then. (McConnell's blocking of Merrick Garland shows that he thought it would motivate conservatives more than liberals in the 2016 election, and I think he was right. Conservatives care more about the Court than liberals.) Conservatives care about the Court because it is an anti-democratic block on legislative change. They fear that democratic majorities will adopt laws that they don't like, and they want to stop that with the Court.

There's no way this ends well anytime soon. Conservatives have politicized the Court, to the point that Garland was denied even a hearing in 2016 because he was a Democrat, and Republicans have been declaring their support for Trump's nominee this week before he has announced who it is. We can all be nostalgic for a Court that was less politicized, but that isn't the Court we have anymore. The politicization wrecks the Court's legitimacy, which is too bad. Democrats who want to pretend otherwise are engaged in denial.

The Constitution doesn't solve this problem, because it doesn't cap the the number of justices. The Republicans have been packing the Court for years. The Democrats should do it too. Maybe someday we'll get some agreement about how to depoliticize the institution, but there aren't any Republican politicians who can even have that conversation now.

FDR was a Republican?