I suppose it's possible that Hawley is brandishing 230 as a weapon to force these providers to 'voluntarily' treat themselves as a public access platform; but the problem with that is twofold:
1. The internet doesn't do nuance... the threat becomes the victory condition.
2. Victory, in this case, destroys the thing it looks to preserve.
3. Bonus: In negotiating terms: The stick is too big*
*This happens a lot to me... customers say I'd better give them a great price because they can solve their problem for free... the issue is that I can't possibly beat free so I tell them that's good news, they should definitely solve their problem for free. Godspeed. Then, of course, they tell me what their really problem is and why the free solution won't fix it... then I ask if 'that' problem is worth $XX... if the answer is still no... then I wish them well, shake hands a part as friends. If the answer is yes... then their 'stick' was too big to beat me with... and they received no negotiating advantage. You need to beat me with a stick that's the right size and believable.
Right, the 'danger' of 230 is that it opens these companies up to becoming publicly regulated utilities. They can't be sued for access, but then access become the thing they provide, and the access passes from private to public good... and therefore subject to regulations that vitiate any private TOS.
Hawley *wants* 230 and campaigning against it is why we live in an idiocracy.
That's not terribly newsworthy... but this comment from Dr. Alex Salter is.
Libertarians for Solidarity, yo!
UPDATE: This in today from Prof. Alex Salter at Texas Tech, who gives me permission to post it:
This is Alex Salter, from Texas Tech University. We’ve corresponded a few times over the years. I read your post about the American Solidarity Party and wanted to share why I, a free-market economist, decided to vote for them.
I’m currently writing a book about distributism, which is under contract with Catholic University of America Press. I went back to the classic works of Belloc and Chesterton to see what sort of a dialogue contemporary economists could have with distributists. I was surprised at just how much political-economic wisdom I found.
A central claim is that a free society (by which I mean one that preserves ordered liberty) requires not only political freedom, but economic freedom as well. Freedom in this sense is positive, not merely negative: it requires access to capital. Property must be widely distributed, or at least widely accessible, or else the modal household/family has no reason to ‘buy in’ to the social order.
In economics jargon, you could say that the distributists argue there is a negative externaltiy associated with the market mechanism: the free-market allocation of resources, including productive capital, is not necessarily the allocation that will result in the preservation of democratic-republicanism, subsidiarity, etc.
The American Solidarity Party is the only organization I’m aware of that is taking these arguments seriously. They are also the only party with a substantive commitment to the common good. For these reasons, although I have my reservations about many things in their platform, I eagerly want them to have a larger political voice, both locally and nationally. The rest of my ballot was a mix of parties, but Brian Carroll was my vote for President. (Carroll is an approved write-in candidate in TX.)
After supper tonight the family voted with the first of our remote ballots.
It was fun sitting around the table with the kids googling the candidates and grimacing at their platforms before we made a decision (the R and D platforms, of course, not Solidarity). We agreed before looking that if *any* democrat took a pro-life position, we'd vote for them no matter their other positions. It seems the D's will dutifully fall on their swords rather than send any representatives from anywhere near these environs.
A couple quick hits:
* Ballots have to be witnessed *unless* you don't feel 'safe' having a witness. Which is one of those things that sound fine, but in simple practice means ballots have no requirement for a witness. Which is also fine (I guess)... but just abandon the idea of a witness because there's no need or provision to identify what safety means. It's just dumb... waive the requirement for a witness. Period. Otherwise we're suggesting that its 'possible' that some of the unsigned ballots are invalid rather than 'unsafe'.
*Constitutional amendment to change districting to a bi-partisan committee ... which I like less than defining the data method first, then the review committee... but I've been persuaded that data analytics have transformed districting for the worse, so it shouldn't be done by the majority of the assembly alone.
*Another constitutional amendment for a lovely sentiment, but one which has no business being written into the constitution. That's what laws are for.
*I doubt we'll be removing any statues in my jurisdiction, but thanks for asking.
I'd say maybe Regan would be the better comp to synthesize with Pinky.
Love him or hate him, he put in the 20-years of work as part of a movement that eventually arrived in 1980. When he arrived he arrived with policies, think tanks, congressmen, Senators, Governors and an entire apparatus that stepped in to the Executive branch on day 1.
Bill Clinton is a similar example in that he aligned with and was championed by the New Democrats which brought in on day 1 an apparatus that had done the pre-work to necessary to take the Democratic party in a different direction.
Obama is an example of a person who didn't and saw his presidency suffer for having jumped the gun. My critique here isn't that he was unfit for the presidency, just that he didn't do the work necessary to make his presidency more than the B- it was.
Interesting how Shire Envy has replaced Polis Envy... Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for in this life and the next.
The answer is that you're viewing Solidarity/Subsidiarity as pre-modern where it is in fact post-Modern. The idea of Democracy held by most of us here is - at best - a 19th century notion that's just beginning to grapple with the fact that we aren't doing Democracy, but instead we're now doing Mass Democracy. We're just now becoming the equivalent of Industrial Revolution Moving Assembly Line Democrats... in the era of advanced Automated Democracy.
The problem with your question is that if you have a single-assembly-line model of Democracy, anything you do to 'fix' the line breaks it elsewhere unless you fix everything all at once.
We don't do factories that way any more, and we can't do democracy that way anymore. Just as we're moving to advanced management principles which give autonomy to workers and business units to accomplish goals rather than tasks, that's how you have to think of Democracy going forward. Some democratic units will handle these issues differently than others... as long as we're within the framework of Lowest-common-denominator Solidarity (or Mere Solidarity as I call it) then you have to allow for those other people over there to do it wrong.
Sure, these are good practical observations. It is hard to build a party, especially when the voting apparatus is designed to put new parties at significant disadvantage. Which is why we don't really have a political "farm club" model but more of a Pirate / Hostile Takeover model for the two existing Parties - which is worse.
Practically we could advocate for minor changes to the mechanics of voting (to displace first past the post pluralities); but absent that there's really no other option than to run for office to gain a profile to launch the movement that hopefully builds the infrastructure needed to... Hijack an existing party vessel, see your ideas co-opted by another party without attribution, or be the rare case where a new party replaces the old.
That said, I'm 100% on board with the fact that political parties are also political movements are also cultural avatars are also think-tanks and policy groups are also coalitions with evolving priorities based upon paths available to them. In this sense I'm the Aristotelean Politics guy... there's no perfect form we're trying to bring down from heaven... just the day-to-day work of building polity. And that day-to-day work has to happen first, before the Party has an identity or an ability to govern.
This was precisely the argument I made to reluctant Trump voters, and I stand proven right in everything I told them would happen if you try to do politics by personality - without building the political infrastructure right and first. [Bracketing the catastrophically bad Personality that was the first premise of my arguments].
So I agree with your observations, and re-iterate that if a thing is worth doing, it'll be done badly at first.
Yeah, the ASP is clearly stating incrementalist approaches and policies (which makes me doubt Ahmari is much of a supporter of the political project, even though he's read the same books)... even if you adjusted a tiny fraction of policies to be oriented towards Solidarity and reworked a handful of programs to be more subsidiarist you might see incremental less-badness. And that's why it's potentially an option, and potentially a threat. Usually claims of Utopia signal internal discord of the claimant rather than a substantial critique.
Right. From my perspective Bushism (Compassionate Conservatism) would be critiqued in a similar way we'd critique the Left... if the goal is to simply tax and re-allocate, then we're not really broadening economic gains but negotiating service fees from a segment of the population that is manipulating the rules that govern markets to their advantage... sometimes by trading small fees/taxes for small benefits to large numbers. That's the neo-liberal consensus in a nut-shell -- Left and Right alike.
It's an important distinction that a Solidarity Party isn't simply taking Left/Right positions in a new amalgam, but really does look to incrementally change the direction of the ship on some important matters... it recognizes markets, but it recognizes them as Game Theory domains, not invisible hand Natural Law dynamics. The Economic Laws aren't a priori, they are crafted and discerned a posteriori. The market is always a human game. Importantly it is a game that is too complex to control absolutely, but it isn't a game where the rules cannot be questioned at all... and more fundamentally, it isn't a game that would exist without rules in any scenario.
This is an important distinction that prevents this economic approach from trying to do too much while acknowledging it is possible to do too little.
But that's why it isn't Trumpism, nor Bushism, nor Neo-liberalism, nor Libertarianism, nor Mercantilism... it's a Stakeholder Economics where the Stakeholders are as broadly distributed as possible.
On the contrary, I think you bring up a very good point. Subsidiarity indeed encompasses all of Civil Society; in fact, an important part is that Civil Society is both public and private institutions. The error is crowding out one to the exclusion of the other. You could see how it might make some on the right uncomfortable for not always trying to diminish govt. while making some on the left uncomfortable for making govt entities one among many. Think of it as right-sizing government within a civil framework that is more than just govt.
I see... I agree in the sense that there's no top-down magic-wand win-the-presidency and usher in the age of solidarity. But then, these early forays into the public sphere are more about messaging and getting the ball rolling. Nothing more happens without small local governance projects.
It is fundamentally a trust building project... so you've hit on that directly.
But I'll also point out that Parties also gather-in dots and consolidate them... some of what we're seeing is the unfocus of the parties and the revolt of the dots.
Interesting thought; I'm not sure that subsidiarity itself is a faction. It's more like a self-regulating principle of federation that seeks to balance competing entities by giving legitimate autonomy and a self interest in not allowing authority to become too concentrated... both by decentralizing primary authority and providing the framework that prohibits consolidation. I should note also that this is a bias that carries into commercial projects as well. Ideally any entity that is XY big has counter-balancing entities which are also XY big. The important distinction is that there isn't an Uber power that creates the sub-powers.
But yes, the danger to any sort of decentralization is centralization... and the temptation to centralize in the name of efficiency is the ever present danger in politics as it is in commerce. The main thing to consider is that we're failing on all fronts with regards centralization. If we don't start an incremental movement away from these tendencies (which I fear are more enshrined in our popular consciousness than we realize) then we'll wonder how it is we've lost what little subsidiarity we currently have.
Not sure if that helps or misses the mark... there's no political system that isn't in danger of constant decay. Subsidiarity looks to address the decay by providing less centralized / multi-polar polity that depends upon a minimal (rather than maximal) solidarity. Think of it as 'mere solidarity' rather than uniform genomic singularity.
Agreed. It might be possible to change some voting paradigms (if not the entire regime) to open up space for more parties... ranked choice plus run-off systems could change dynamics so coalitions are formed around actual platforms and support traded for policy objectives. Really wouldn't have to be that radical just to alter the first past the post plurality that's locking us into the duopoly.
I've looked at this again and again over the years and my opinion is no.
We usually overlook the 7-2 per curiam decision which found "the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause" and the tighter decision was with regards remedy and timing.
Given the first, I'd argue that the partisan stance was the remedy which would have jeopardized the functioning of the Electoral College. That is, by making the remedy vote closer than it was, it gave the appearance of partisanship that isn't the fault of the consistent jurists.
So the partisan position is: You're violating the due process clause in your methods, and cannot meet the deadlines in the code of the Electoral college... but do carry on.
Its certainly unfortunate that Florida FUBARed it's electoral mechanics and we didn't really have a plan or process in place to deal with such an event... but simple power politics of voting against the law to seat your guy? No, I really don't see it.
The logical obverse of the campaign posturing... "see, we're all that stands between you and anarchy - which is why you have to vote for us even though we already confirmed ACB and therefore you don't... not really"
But yes, I'd say nominating one's daughter who isn't a lawyer would indeed signal something else.
Neither of us know what the hypothetical legal challenge might be... so I'm not making a statement on how all the justices would rule. But the idea that Trump (or any president) has some sort of leverage over the judges they nominate is just strange.
To be clear, the arguments aren't that ACB has the sort of judicial philosophy that would favor a narrrow interpretation of X... just that she's somehow going to vote in favor of Trump regardless of whatever judicial philosophy she might hold... because, and this is the important part, she 'owes' him.
The argument is literally since she was appointed by the president she has to recuse herself... proximity of time seems to be the only reason that the other two justices also appointed by Trump would not(?) have to recuse themselves. Practically speaking *every* justice was appointed by a President of one party or the other, so I'm not sure they even have standing to rule on the matter.
So Recusal pundits want us to think that Barrett (or any justice) is somehow beholden to the President who appoints them... the moment after their appointment is confirmed and constitutionally protected? What an odd supposition. It requires us to ignore lived experience of the past, well, ever.
I have no idea what form a (possible) constitutional challenge in the upcoming might (hypothetically) take... but among the Federalist Society judges that you'd get, Barrett is probably a better bet *not* to go all-in for Trump.
On “Hanlon’s Razor and Why It Is Being Violated”
I suppose it's possible that Hawley is brandishing 230 as a weapon to force these providers to 'voluntarily' treat themselves as a public access platform; but the problem with that is twofold:
1. The internet doesn't do nuance... the threat becomes the victory condition.
2. Victory, in this case, destroys the thing it looks to preserve.
3. Bonus: In negotiating terms: The stick is too big*
*This happens a lot to me... customers say I'd better give them a great price because they can solve their problem for free... the issue is that I can't possibly beat free so I tell them that's good news, they should definitely solve their problem for free. Godspeed. Then, of course, they tell me what their really problem is and why the free solution won't fix it... then I ask if 'that' problem is worth $XX... if the answer is still no... then I wish them well, shake hands a part as friends. If the answer is yes... then their 'stick' was too big to beat me with... and they received no negotiating advantage. You need to beat me with a stick that's the right size and believable.
"
Right, the 'danger' of 230 is that it opens these companies up to becoming publicly regulated utilities. They can't be sued for access, but then access become the thing they provide, and the access passes from private to public good... and therefore subject to regulations that vitiate any private TOS.
Hawley *wants* 230 and campaigning against it is why we live in an idiocracy.
On “A Third Way: The American Solidarity Party’s Case”
As it happens, Dreher is also blogging about ASP.
That's not terribly newsworthy... but this comment from Dr. Alex Salter is.
Libertarians for Solidarity, yo!
UPDATE: This in today from Prof. Alex Salter at Texas Tech, who gives me permission to post it:
This is Alex Salter, from Texas Tech University. We’ve corresponded a few times over the years. I read your post about the American Solidarity Party and wanted to share why I, a free-market economist, decided to vote for them.
I’m currently writing a book about distributism, which is under contract with Catholic University of America Press. I went back to the classic works of Belloc and Chesterton to see what sort of a dialogue contemporary economists could have with distributists. I was surprised at just how much political-economic wisdom I found.
A central claim is that a free society (by which I mean one that preserves ordered liberty) requires not only political freedom, but economic freedom as well. Freedom in this sense is positive, not merely negative: it requires access to capital. Property must be widely distributed, or at least widely accessible, or else the modal household/family has no reason to ‘buy in’ to the social order.
In economics jargon, you could say that the distributists argue there is a negative externaltiy associated with the market mechanism: the free-market allocation of resources, including productive capital, is not necessarily the allocation that will result in the preservation of democratic-republicanism, subsidiarity, etc.
The American Solidarity Party is the only organization I’m aware of that is taking these arguments seriously. They are also the only party with a substantive commitment to the common good. For these reasons, although I have my reservations about many things in their platform, I eagerly want them to have a larger political voice, both locally and nationally. The rest of my ballot was a mix of parties, but Brian Carroll was my vote for President. (Carroll is an approved write-in candidate in TX.)
"
After supper tonight the family voted with the first of our remote ballots.
It was fun sitting around the table with the kids googling the candidates and grimacing at their platforms before we made a decision (the R and D platforms, of course, not Solidarity). We agreed before looking that if *any* democrat took a pro-life position, we'd vote for them no matter their other positions. It seems the D's will dutifully fall on their swords rather than send any representatives from anywhere near these environs.
A couple quick hits:
* Ballots have to be witnessed *unless* you don't feel 'safe' having a witness. Which is one of those things that sound fine, but in simple practice means ballots have no requirement for a witness. Which is also fine (I guess)... but just abandon the idea of a witness because there's no need or provision to identify what safety means. It's just dumb... waive the requirement for a witness. Period. Otherwise we're suggesting that its 'possible' that some of the unsigned ballots are invalid rather than 'unsafe'.
*Constitutional amendment to change districting to a bi-partisan committee ... which I like less than defining the data method first, then the review committee... but I've been persuaded that data analytics have transformed districting for the worse, so it shouldn't be done by the majority of the assembly alone.
*Another constitutional amendment for a lovely sentiment, but one which has no business being written into the constitution. That's what laws are for.
*I doubt we'll be removing any statues in my jurisdiction, but thanks for asking.
"
Thanks Kristin, good of you to say.
On “More Record Fundraising for Biden Campaign”
heh... just win PA, MI, WI. Getting flashbacks of running up the score in 2016.
On “A Third Way: The American Solidarity Party’s Case”
I'd say maybe Regan would be the better comp to synthesize with Pinky.
Love him or hate him, he put in the 20-years of work as part of a movement that eventually arrived in 1980. When he arrived he arrived with policies, think tanks, congressmen, Senators, Governors and an entire apparatus that stepped in to the Executive branch on day 1.
Bill Clinton is a similar example in that he aligned with and was championed by the New Democrats which brought in on day 1 an apparatus that had done the pre-work to necessary to take the Democratic party in a different direction.
Obama is an example of a person who didn't and saw his presidency suffer for having jumped the gun. My critique here isn't that he was unfit for the presidency, just that he didn't do the work necessary to make his presidency more than the B- it was.
"
Interesting how Shire Envy has replaced Polis Envy... Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for in this life and the next.
The answer is that you're viewing Solidarity/Subsidiarity as pre-modern where it is in fact post-Modern. The idea of Democracy held by most of us here is - at best - a 19th century notion that's just beginning to grapple with the fact that we aren't doing Democracy, but instead we're now doing Mass Democracy. We're just now becoming the equivalent of Industrial Revolution Moving Assembly Line Democrats... in the era of advanced Automated Democracy.
The problem with your question is that if you have a single-assembly-line model of Democracy, anything you do to 'fix' the line breaks it elsewhere unless you fix everything all at once.
We don't do factories that way any more, and we can't do democracy that way anymore. Just as we're moving to advanced management principles which give autonomy to workers and business units to accomplish goals rather than tasks, that's how you have to think of Democracy going forward. Some democratic units will handle these issues differently than others... as long as we're within the framework of Lowest-common-denominator Solidarity (or Mere Solidarity as I call it) then you have to allow for those other people over there to do it wrong.
"
Sure, these are good practical observations. It is hard to build a party, especially when the voting apparatus is designed to put new parties at significant disadvantage. Which is why we don't really have a political "farm club" model but more of a Pirate / Hostile Takeover model for the two existing Parties - which is worse.
Practically we could advocate for minor changes to the mechanics of voting (to displace first past the post pluralities); but absent that there's really no other option than to run for office to gain a profile to launch the movement that hopefully builds the infrastructure needed to... Hijack an existing party vessel, see your ideas co-opted by another party without attribution, or be the rare case where a new party replaces the old.
That said, I'm 100% on board with the fact that political parties are also political movements are also cultural avatars are also think-tanks and policy groups are also coalitions with evolving priorities based upon paths available to them. In this sense I'm the Aristotelean Politics guy... there's no perfect form we're trying to bring down from heaven... just the day-to-day work of building polity. And that day-to-day work has to happen first, before the Party has an identity or an ability to govern.
This was precisely the argument I made to reluctant Trump voters, and I stand proven right in everything I told them would happen if you try to do politics by personality - without building the political infrastructure right and first. [Bracketing the catastrophically bad Personality that was the first premise of my arguments].
So I agree with your observations, and re-iterate that if a thing is worth doing, it'll be done badly at first.
"
Yeah, the ASP is clearly stating incrementalist approaches and policies (which makes me doubt Ahmari is much of a supporter of the political project, even though he's read the same books)... even if you adjusted a tiny fraction of policies to be oriented towards Solidarity and reworked a handful of programs to be more subsidiarist you might see incremental less-badness. And that's why it's potentially an option, and potentially a threat. Usually claims of Utopia signal internal discord of the claimant rather than a substantial critique.
"
Right. From my perspective Bushism (Compassionate Conservatism) would be critiqued in a similar way we'd critique the Left... if the goal is to simply tax and re-allocate, then we're not really broadening economic gains but negotiating service fees from a segment of the population that is manipulating the rules that govern markets to their advantage... sometimes by trading small fees/taxes for small benefits to large numbers. That's the neo-liberal consensus in a nut-shell -- Left and Right alike.
It's an important distinction that a Solidarity Party isn't simply taking Left/Right positions in a new amalgam, but really does look to incrementally change the direction of the ship on some important matters... it recognizes markets, but it recognizes them as Game Theory domains, not invisible hand Natural Law dynamics. The Economic Laws aren't a priori, they are crafted and discerned a posteriori. The market is always a human game. Importantly it is a game that is too complex to control absolutely, but it isn't a game where the rules cannot be questioned at all... and more fundamentally, it isn't a game that would exist without rules in any scenario.
This is an important distinction that prevents this economic approach from trying to do too much while acknowledging it is possible to do too little.
But that's why it isn't Trumpism, nor Bushism, nor Neo-liberalism, nor Libertarianism, nor Mercantilism... it's a Stakeholder Economics where the Stakeholders are as broadly distributed as possible.
"
On the contrary, I think you bring up a very good point. Subsidiarity indeed encompasses all of Civil Society; in fact, an important part is that Civil Society is both public and private institutions. The error is crowding out one to the exclusion of the other. You could see how it might make some on the right uncomfortable for not always trying to diminish govt. while making some on the left uncomfortable for making govt entities one among many. Think of it as right-sizing government within a civil framework that is more than just govt.
Good observation, thanks.
"
I see... I agree in the sense that there's no top-down magic-wand win-the-presidency and usher in the age of solidarity. But then, these early forays into the public sphere are more about messaging and getting the ball rolling. Nothing more happens without small local governance projects.
It is fundamentally a trust building project... so you've hit on that directly.
"
Let slip the dots of war.
But I'll also point out that Parties also gather-in dots and consolidate them... some of what we're seeing is the unfocus of the parties and the revolt of the dots.
"
Doughnuts and coffee in the basement for all people of good will... we'll see that you get an invitation.
"
Interesting thought; I'm not sure that subsidiarity itself is a faction. It's more like a self-regulating principle of federation that seeks to balance competing entities by giving legitimate autonomy and a self interest in not allowing authority to become too concentrated... both by decentralizing primary authority and providing the framework that prohibits consolidation. I should note also that this is a bias that carries into commercial projects as well. Ideally any entity that is XY big has counter-balancing entities which are also XY big. The important distinction is that there isn't an Uber power that creates the sub-powers.
But yes, the danger to any sort of decentralization is centralization... and the temptation to centralize in the name of efficiency is the ever present danger in politics as it is in commerce. The main thing to consider is that we're failing on all fronts with regards centralization. If we don't start an incremental movement away from these tendencies (which I fear are more enshrined in our popular consciousness than we realize) then we'll wonder how it is we've lost what little subsidiarity we currently have.
Not sure if that helps or misses the mark... there's no political system that isn't in danger of constant decay. Subsidiarity looks to address the decay by providing less centralized / multi-polar polity that depends upon a minimal (rather than maximal) solidarity. Think of it as 'mere solidarity' rather than uniform genomic singularity.
"
Agreed. It might be possible to change some voting paradigms (if not the entire regime) to open up space for more parties... ranked choice plus run-off systems could change dynamics so coalitions are formed around actual platforms and support traded for policy objectives. Really wouldn't have to be that radical just to alter the first past the post plurality that's locking us into the duopoly.
On “Open Thread: Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation Hearings”
I've looked at this again and again over the years and my opinion is no.
We usually overlook the 7-2 per curiam decision which found "the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause" and the tighter decision was with regards remedy and timing.
Given the first, I'd argue that the partisan stance was the remedy which would have jeopardized the functioning of the Electoral College. That is, by making the remedy vote closer than it was, it gave the appearance of partisanship that isn't the fault of the consistent jurists.
So the partisan position is: You're violating the due process clause in your methods, and cannot meet the deadlines in the code of the Electoral college... but do carry on.
Its certainly unfortunate that Florida FUBARed it's electoral mechanics and we didn't really have a plan or process in place to deal with such an event... but simple power politics of voting against the law to seat your guy? No, I really don't see it.
"
The logical obverse of the campaign posturing... "see, we're all that stands between you and anarchy - which is why you have to vote for us even though we already confirmed ACB and therefore you don't... not really"
But yes feeding frenzy is indiscriminate.
"
Oh, according to Ted Cruz? Well then. :-)
But yes, I'd say nominating one's daughter who isn't a lawyer would indeed signal something else.
Neither of us know what the hypothetical legal challenge might be... so I'm not making a statement on how all the justices would rule. But the idea that Trump (or any president) has some sort of leverage over the judges they nominate is just strange.
To be clear, the arguments aren't that ACB has the sort of judicial philosophy that would favor a narrrow interpretation of X... just that she's somehow going to vote in favor of Trump regardless of whatever judicial philosophy she might hold... because, and this is the important part, she 'owes' him.
The argument is literally since she was appointed by the president she has to recuse herself... proximity of time seems to be the only reason that the other two justices also appointed by Trump would not(?) have to recuse themselves. Practically speaking *every* justice was appointed by a President of one party or the other, so I'm not sure they even have standing to rule on the matter.
"
As far as I can tell... the confirmation hearings are anything but.
Watching Senators petition the nominee as subjects would petition their rulers is illuminating on how exactly our particular disfunction works.
"
So Recusal pundits want us to think that Barrett (or any justice) is somehow beholden to the President who appoints them... the moment after their appointment is confirmed and constitutionally protected? What an odd supposition. It requires us to ignore lived experience of the past, well, ever.
I have no idea what form a (possible) constitutional challenge in the upcoming might (hypothetically) take... but among the Federalist Society judges that you'd get, Barrett is probably a better bet *not* to go all-in for Trump.