A lot of people on both sides of the aisle have cringed at Donald Trump’s ham-handed intimidation of the district and appellate judges who blocked his travel ban. But it should come as no surprise that some elements of the GOP base think Trump’s attacks on “so-called judges” who defied him are just peachy. Now, one of their old champions, Pat Buchanan, has openly called for Trump to not only keep up his war on the courts, but ramp it up into Defcon 1.
In a column for WorldNetDaily–or rather, WorldNutDaily–Buchanan claims that anyone wringing their hands at Trump’s attacks on judges is “ignorant of history.” He reminds us that Thomas Jefferson pushed for the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase for his past work as a trial judge. But what Buchanan conveniently leaves out is that even though the Senate was dominated by Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, Chase was acquitted on all charges–thus establishing the precedent that judges cannot lose their gavels merely for bad rulings.
Having proven himself ignorant of history, Buchanan then reveals that he is grossly ignorant of the principles of checks and balances.
“Whether the roll-out of the president’s temporary travel ban was ill-prepared or not, and whether one agrees or not about which nations or people should be subjected to extreme vetting, the president’s authority in the matter of protecting the borders and keeping out those he sees as potentially dangerous is universally conceded.
That a district judge would overrule the president of the United States on a matter of border security in wartime is absurd.”
If I’m reading this right, Buchanan is saying that when the president acts on immigration matters, it’s not illegal–even if that action is blatantly discriminatory, or runs counter to international law or basic decency. That’s not really surprising, considering that Buchanan once worked for Richard Nixon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HZHlygbd4I
Buchanan uses this to recycle an old far-right shibboleth about judges–they have no right to overturn the will of the people.
“Indeed, one of the mightiest forces that has birthed the new populism that imperils the establishment is that unelected justices like Warren and Brennan, and their progeny on the bench, have remade our country without the consent of the governed – and with never having been smacked down by Congress or the president.
Consider. Secularist justices de-Christianized our country. They invented new rights for vicious criminals as though criminal justice were a game. They tore our country apart with idiotic busing orders to achieve racial balance in public schools. They turned over centuries of tradition and hundreds of state, local and federal laws to discover that the rights to an abortion and same-sex marriage were there in Madison’s Constitution all along. We just couldn’t see them.”
As far as Buchanan is concerned, the judicial block on Trump’s travel ban is a golden opportunity to punish the judiciary for years of “arrogant and incompetent conduct.” He believes Congress should use its constitutional power under Article III to “restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.”
Unless I’m very wrong here, Buchanan is calling for Ryan, McConnell, and friends to strip the courts of jurisdiction over immigration matters. So in Buchanan’s world, if children are denied a chance at life-saving medical care because they aren’t allowed to enter this country, they would have no recourse. And if people are denied a chance to work or continue their education, they would have no recourse. All because if Buchanan had his way, if the president acted on immigration matters, it would not be illegal.
Buchanan has been wrong on a lot of things over the years–and in a lot of cases, bad wrong. But this screed is one of his worst by a city mile.
(featured image courtesy WBUR, available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license)
