The Supreme Court Decision and Conservative White Christian Voters



There is finally some acknowledgement recent Supreme Court decisions may affect politics. One reoccurring theme claimed by Trump voters in 2016 was that there may be only one reason to vote for him, the Supreme Court nominees he has promised to appoint. Now, the first one he appointed has turned out to be enemy Number One, Judge Neil Gorsuch.

We all know it is not possible to predict what voters will do in November. Polling does not predict as good as it did a while back. Yet, if people actually voted for Trump because of his promised judicial choices and they have not turned out like it was predicted it's attractive to think they will not be persuaded so easily this coming November.

A wise person once said, "You can't go too wrong predicting that Supreme Court decisions will follow closely the last election." The last election Democrats picked up House seats.

I've been trying to understand the relationship between the Supreme Court and the other two branches of government, the President and Congress. Someone wrote recently we no longer have three branches of government, we have about 2 1/2. This is because the House and Senate are unable or unwilling to pass much legislation. The Presidents, then, exercise their prerogatives. The Supreme Court in turn rules on matters that during other periods of our history were sorted out by the House and Senate.

One can see this in Gorsuch's writing about his decision gays cannot be fired. He admitted several issues are left undecided. These issues, he wrote, will be sorted out in future court cases. To me this means he expects no action from Congress to determines how many, if any, exemptions will be made to this recent ruling.

This new responsibility of the court makes me optimistic it will uphold the right of women to have abortions. Right wing anti women legislators can vote to eliminate rights to abortion by saying, "A fetus is a human being." When asked what rights women have they can shrug and walk away. Judges at the Supreme Court, however, know they will be required to say specifically what rights women will or will not retain and may find it difficult to take away as many as legislators.

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