She is a liberal Democrat and proud to be. Perhaps the biggest tribute to her is the fact that bereavement over her demise erased that distinction. Legal scholars and everyday men and women, regardless of partisan color, felt the loss of this one-woman pillar of American justice.
Even Donald Trump, no big fan of liberal Democrat orthodoxy, could say of her death little or nothing beyond "I am sad." And that is sad.
Eulogies are the easiest speeches to write. In solemn grief or with candor, it's difficult to say anything wrong about the dearly departed. Barack Obama said of the late Senator John Cain at his funeral he was a master at mischief, "After all, what better way is there to have the last laugh than to get George [President Bush] and I to say nice things about him to a national audience?" People who were in tears earlier were in chuckles just moments later and realizing why they so loved John McCain for it. And Barack Obama for eloquence apropos.
As effortless as it should have been for Donald Trump to say "something nice" about RBG, he just couldn't. Even doing that is a bridge too far for the master of disparaging, of doom and gloom, sinisterism and conspiracy theory formulation.
But it is not dumb. It is smart. Donald Trump knows he cannot extol the virtues of a woman upon whose grave he has some serious dancing pre-planned. If he pontificated too hard about the redeeming virtues of an irreplaceable woman, he runs the risk of being held on his word. He can go halfway, he can order the American flag flown at half-mast. But he cannot make the full concession of honoring a dying woman's last fervent wish: that she not be replaced until after the American people have weighed in on who must replace her.
A simple wish, Donald Trump's answer to which was a simple no.
That's why any tears that Donald Trump sheds for RBG will be reptilian. Her death is only a national tragedy to the rest of America but it is Christmas come early for Donald Trump. He was fresh out of uniting issues to rally the fast-fragmenting Republican party. He couldn't spin the COVID-19 disaster into a positive, with the backdrop of a national fatality rate still hovering at more than 1,000 lives a day. Joe Biden is proving be too tough of a piƱata that just wouldn't burst no matter how hard he whacked it.
He needed a rallying cry and fast. When RBG died, that rallying cry became nominating her replacement with less than 45 days to the election. He promised a judiciary packed with conservatives, and it doesn't get any higher than the US Supreme Court. He promised to overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and to circle the wagons around the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. Big promises--huge--but as long as he didn't have full rein of the Supreme Court's composition, he was off the hook.
In fact, he is still off the hook. Republican mavericks slowly becoming disillusioned with Trumpism and about ready to abandon ship now have to call off their nuanced mutiny. Trump in the Ginsburg era would say "I can't deliver because the justices--they don't like me, not enough of them." in the post-Ginsburg days ahead he can say, "I can't deliver because no one's helping me replace her."
This early Trump is sounding more doctrinaire-Republican than anyone else even just on Twitter: it's the Republicans' moral duty to appoint Ginsburg's replacement because failing to do so is an abdication of everything republicanism stands for.
In the unlikeliest scenario that he foregoes replacing RBG, the strategically important undecided American swing-vote would say, "Hey, the guy does have an ounce of nobility."
In other words, Trump can do no wrong. If he doesn't get what he wants from the doubting factions of the GOP, he consolidates his hold on his blindly-loyal base. But he also gets a strong talking point about having the political maturity to look beyond the present and to advocate conservatism for future generations. That rings a bell in conservative circles all across fifty states, giving Trump a Paul Revere moment of screaming, "The Leftists are coming! The Letists are coming!" That will shake every fence-sitting Republican off the fence. Meanwhile Trump scores a point on a category he has never scored big on: thinking beyond himself, or at least beyond his time.
But there is this, too: if Donald Trump plays his cards right, he can dissolve the slowly-defining divide between the noble and the amoral Republican. Arguably there are a few in the GOP that want to hold on to some modicum of political nobility. They want to put their foot down on such motherhood platitudes as the word of honor being a contract stronger than oak. Of hypocrisy being anathema to conservatism, especially among evangelicals, But standing firm on lofty principles like these does not come cheap. Roe v. Wade is just too high a price to pay. Already, men and women of substantial repute within the party are doing more backflips than you'll see at a Barnum and Bailey circus act.
Even in her death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues to bequeath on the American people the gift of truth by exposing the sincere from the charlatan. It's just unfortunate that its by-product is the gift of undeserved golden opportunity for the man whose guiding principles in life are the polar opposite of hers.
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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