WSJ editorial page: Sam Alito would never resign if he thought he would be replaced by a results-oriented hack
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As always, this poses impossible questions about the extent to which they’re deceiving their audience and the extent to which they’re deceiving themselves:
Mr. Trump might also think about whether he wants another Supreme Court appointment or two. Clarence Thomas is 76 and Samuel Alito turns 75 on April 1. Both will face a choice of whether to resign during the Trump Presidency or risk another election cycle.
Neither one is likely to resign if he lacks confidence in Mr. Trump’s judgment about who might be his successor. They have too much respect for the law, and the Court, to resign if they think Mr. Trump will nominate a results-first, law-second legal hack.
“Now pull my finger.”
Wait — it gets even more ridiculous. This is the directly preceding paragraph:
All the more so if the Justices perceive that Mr. Trump is encouraging the MAGA-verse to attack the judiciary. Some Trump loyalists are already blaming the Chief for Judge Boasberg. They say he and Justice Barrett should have sent a stronger message to lower courts by overruling a lower-court decision on dispersing $2 billion in USAID funds. We thought the four dissenters on that case were right, but beating up the other Justices won’t make them more likely to go along on the next one.
This is the very nonpartisan and technical beginning of the conclusion of Alito’s dissent in that case:
Today, the Court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.
This payment — as Alito himself subsequently concedes — is to fulfill a contractual obligation for work already performed. To describe this as a “penalty” on the taxpayer is pure lawless thuggery like, to pick a random hypothetical, a casino magnate refusing to pay his contractors. So I guess I agree with the WSJ about this: there’s no way Alito would agree to step down for someone who put the law second, he’s be a looking for a more suitable replacement who wouldn’t put it in the top ten.