Romney has established himself as one of the “better” Republicans over the past couple years, but this quote from him about the contraception bill is so stupid. Yes Mitt, considering that a few weeks ago the Supreme Court literally just reversed one of their foremost decisions fifty years after the fact, it would probably be wise to actually start writing their rulings in ink.
Rubio is actually correct on this issue. The Supreme Court is only constrained if there are sixty-seven votes for removal of a justice, and there aren't, so they can strike down acts of Congress just as easily as legal precedents using rationale just as thin as that in
Dobbs. Rubio's mistake was failing to explain the logic.
Romney is also correct, in that Kavanaugh very obviously is desperately in need of legal contraception, so there's no way in Hades that he's the fifth vote to strike down
Griswold. His concurrence in
Dobbs is not a smokescreen.
If the Democrats want to do something productive, the correct pathway is to pack the Court, but doing that places a very large bet on retaining either the Supreme Court or the Senate for a good long while. That becomes a much better bet if Greitens wins next week's Senate primary, in which case the Republicans are probably punting two layup seats (Warnock and Blunt) for six years as well as incumbency advantage in the next go-round.
My guess would be that Greitens will outperform his polling numbers due to social desirability effects, in much the same way that Trump outperformed his polling numbers in 2016. That would likely put the Republicans in a very iffy position going into 2024. Sinema is probably the most flippable seat, but the Republicans have far more territory to defend with Scott, Cruz, Hawley and even Braun vulnerable. I can't see anyone other than Justice (should he run) beating Manchin.
