Alexandra DeSanctis here, filling in for Jim Geraghty. On the menu today: Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin gears up for a congressional run more than a decade after bowing out of politics, and 53 senators vote to move forward with Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination.
Sarah Palin Goes to Congress?
Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has announced that she intends to seek election to the House of Representatives in her home state of Alaska, a move that has prompted raised eyebrows from many, but not from Donald Trump. The former president was quick to lend Palin his support, extending his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to her campaign.
In doing so, Trump was merely returning the favor. Palin endorsed Trump for president way back in January 2016, before a single primary had taken place, a move that some argue was an important early victory for a candidate trying to establish his bona fides in the GOP.
The seat Palin is seeking was recently left open by the death of Republican Don Young, who had represented Alaska’s at-large congressional district for 49 years at the time he passed away, making him the GOP’s longest-serving member of Congress.
As a result of the vacancy, the race is a special election and thus is on a different timetable from the regular congressional race; the primary will take place on June 11 and the general election on August 16. More than 50 candidates have already filed to run, and the winner will have to get to a daunting 50 percent support to win, but Palin seems to have as good of a chance as any. The New York Times notes that October was “the last time anyone tried to gauge her popularity in Alaska,” and pollster Ivan Moore found that her approval rating was a mere 31 percent. But some Alaska political consultants think Palin has a decent shot, or would even qualify as the favorite in a field of dozens. Here’s more from the Times on Palin’s advantages heading into the race:
She’ll have near-universal name recognition. She should be able to raise significant sums of money from small donors — a must, given how soon the June 11 primary will be held. She was a popular governor, though by the end of her tenure, her approval rating had slunk from the low 90s to the mid-50s. And the national interest in the race will lead to free media coverage that her opponents can’t match.
Palin and Trump share much in common. She ran for governor in 2006 as an outsider taking on a corrupt political establishment. In 2008, as the vice-presidential running mate for Senator John McCain of Arizona, she pioneered the raucous style of political rallies that Trump would turn into the defining feature of his 2016 run. Many of his campaign themes were first hers: battling the media, railing at cultural elites, trashing Washington insiders.
But the detailed report also noted that Palin’s campaign will face some headwinds:
Palin’s strong name recognition is unlikely to be decisive, said Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser. Noting her high negative ratings, he said “Palin fatigue” could doom her chances among voters who revered Young and take his replacement seriously. . . .
Palin will be competing in a huge field — 51 candidates, including Santa Claus.
That’s partly by design. The voting system Alaska adopted in 2020 was meant to encourage a wide range of candidates to compete. Rather than begin with separate primary elections held by the major political parties, the race will start with one primary that is open to everyone who qualifies. The top four candidates then advance to a general election in which voters rank their favorites.
The system was intended to discourage negative campaigning. Because voters’ second choices are factored into the results, candidates must be careful not to alienate voters who support their rivals. In the New York mayor’s race, this led some candidates to form alliances and campaign together. . . .
Alaska’s fierce independent streak could also hurt Palin’s chances. More than 60 percent of its voters are not registered members of either major political party, and Trump is not especially popular. According to Moore, 43 percent of Alaskans have a “very negative” opinion of the former president.
As we’ve learned in a particularly pointed way over the past several years, a lot can happen in a little time to blow up a race. For one thing, Trump’s endorsements don’t carry as much weight with Republican voters as they once did. But there’s a decent chance that, come summer’s end, Sarah Palin will be headed back to Washington.
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Nomination Moves Forward
Fifty-three senators — including three Republicans — voted yesterday to proceed to a vote on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. The vote took place after the process stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where a vote to move the nomination to a full vote on the Senate floor was deadlocked at 11–11 along party lines.
As a result, the full Senate voted on whether to proceed to a final vote on Jackson’s nomination, and three Republicans joined the Democrats in voting yes. Those Republicans were Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who had already said publicly that she’d vote to confirm Jackson, along with Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the latter of whom is up for reelection this year. Here’s more from the New York Times:
In a statement announcing her support for Judge Jackson, Ms. Murkowski, who is not on the [Judiciary] committee, said she was backing the nominee in part to reject “the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is growing worse and more detached from reality by the year.”
She also praised the judge’s “qualifications, which no one questions; her demonstrated judicial independence; her demeanor and temperament; and the important perspective she would bring to the court” in replacing Justice Stephen G. Breyer.
Mr. Romney, in his statement, called Judge Jackson “a well-qualified jurist and a person of honor.”
Democrats have attempted to paint the rest of the Senate GOP as extreme for refusing to vote Jackson’s nomination out of committee and likewise for opposing her confirmation. “We shouldn’t have to be taking this step, but we are moving forward all the same without delay despite Republicans opposing her in committee,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said ahead of the vote.
Republicans have given a number of reasons as to why they’re opposing Jackson. Some, such as Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, have stated that her judicial philosophy seems to give judges too much power and isn’t sufficiently originalist or textualist. Texas senator John Cornyn cited a similar concern, noting that Jackson wasn’t especially forthcoming about her view of the matter: “Someone of her impressive caliber surely has a judicial philosophy, but maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Iowa senator Chuck Grassley said much the same: “When interpreting the law and Constitution, understanding the principle of limited government is essential. Otherwise, there would be no checks on the federal government.”
Other Republicans have focused on the fact that Jackson wouldn’t say that she opposes expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court, claiming that this reticence is a major reason for their voting against her. Still others have zeroed in on her supposedly lenient sentencing of sex offenders (it’s worth reading our own Andy McCarthy for some clarity on this point).
Of the three stated reasons, the first is, by far, the most compelling. Long gone are the days when most senators would vote for most Supreme Court nominees, regardless of the party of the president who nominated them and regardless of their judicial philosophy. It’s almost impossible to believe that the Senate once confirmed Justice Antonin Scalia unanimously and, shortly thereafter, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg near-unanimously.
As nice as it might be to somehow return to the days before bitter partisanship and toxic confirmation battles — which these days are fueled primarily by the way that Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions removed abortion policy from the hands of the people and placed it in the power of the Court — this is where we are, and there’s no reason to believe we can go back. It’s perfectly reasonable for Republicans to cite Jackson’s apparently expansive view of Supreme Court power, and the power of justice to impose their own readings on the Constitution, as a reason to oppose her confirmation; it’s hardly unfair partisanship to object to this philosophy.
Listening to Democrats trying to spin the GOP “no” votes as some kind of unprecedented and unfair transgression is rather rich, considering how they’ve treated the last handful of Republican nominees, most notably Brett Kavanaugh. That these same politicians would turn around a thousand days later and pretend to be champions of The Process is too much to bear.
ADDENDUM: Listeners to The Editors podcast will know how fond I am of Stanley Tucci. His CNN show Searching for Italy is a real gem, and his new memoir Taste: My Life Through Food, is one of the best books I’ve read in quite some time (and I read a lot!). I reviewed the book for the latest issue of the National Review magazine, and you can read it online here.