Anthony Kennedy and how Republican elites learned to love Donald Trump

When Roe v. Wade is finally tossed into the neoconfederate pyre in 8 weeks or so, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will come in for some very justified criticism. But we really shouldn’t forget that Anthony Kennedy — who has received an enormous amount of credit over the years for preventing Roe from being killed in 1992 — handed Donald J. Trump a Supreme Court seat knowing full well that Roe would be unlikely to survive the operation. He 100% fully owns what’s about to happen (which is also likely to involve his gay rights opinions as well.)

What’s interesting about Kennedy is that he had seemed, in 2015-6, to be distancing himself from the radical turn of the Republican Party, siding with the Court’s liberals much more than usual. But by 2018 this had ended — not only did he strategically retire, he voted like Alito in his last term. Which given that it is the rare prominent Republican who went Never Trump rather than MAGA Today, MAGA Tomorrow, MAGA Forever shouldn’t be surprising.

Kennedy’s pathetic, chickenshit concurrence in Trump v. Hawaii exemplifies how “reasonable” elite Republicans donned their red hats in its few morally squalid grafs — pretending that you can distance yourself from Trump’s racism while buying everything else. But that’s not how that works: in the end, it all hangs on you.