# Mitch McConnell, small time defender of democracy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 16, 2020, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159 "2020-12-16T04:30:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159/21 "2020-12-23T00:09:53Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > I doubt that the Republicans who are minds behind the plans for the judiciary give a flying fuck about Roe. It’s much more about the court being pro-business/pro-establishment. One thing that conservative judges do is promote the status quo and the status quo has worked wonderfully for those people; they’d like to keep things that way. Man, I wouldn’t describe conservative judges as “promoting the status quo” _at all_. The entire point of loading the federal judiciary with conservative judges has been to use the courts to dismantle existing liberal policies and institutions that are too popular to overturn through legislation. And so you get sustained judicial assaults on the ACA, the administrative state, federal civil rights protections, and – of course – abortion rights. What they are circumspect about is doing all of this in so precipitous a fashion as to generate a backlash that could threaten the project. And so they work more incrementally, but just as surely, toward overturning the status quo. Chief Justice John Roberts is the exemplar of this approach and the _sine qua non_ of the conservative judicial movement. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159/22 "2020-12-23T00:11:12Z")
> [@flurb](#): > > The entire point of loading the federal judiciary with conservative judges has been to use the courts to dismantle existing liberal policies and institutions that are too popular to overturn through legislation. And so you get sustained judicial assaults on the ACA, the administrative state, federal civil rights protections, and – of course – abortion rights. All of which are viewed by conservatives as an _aberration,_ a temporary departure from what should have been, and what shortly will now be returned to as, the proper status quo. ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159/23 "2020-12-23T01:35:31Z")
All right, if you want to define the “status quo” as the 1830s then I guess it’s a valid point. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159/24 "2020-12-23T16:00:17Z")
This is where “conservative” shades into “reactionary.” A conservative wants to stop Progress. A reactionary wants to reverse it. The Republican party has been steadily moving from conservative to reactionary since about 1965. Then went from reactionary to realty-lite reactionary some time around the Tea Party and is now in full-bore realty-denial reactionary. IOW, the mainstream Republican is now a John Bircher with a side order of Klansman. While the 8-digit+ wealthy Republican is the same as ever: all business regulation and all taxation is theft. Nothing else matters at all to them. It’s about 15 years too late for the mainstream media to have woken up and been routinely using “reactionary” as the descriptive adjective for the US right. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159/25 "2020-12-23T18:43:15Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > I think that it really comes down to motivation. Many people (most prominantly Trump) expect that conservative judges would bow done before Trump and go along with his most outrageous ideas because that is what they see Congress doing. But that is because Congress needs to be re-elected and so needs the support of Trumps mindless minions behind them. Judges with lifetime appointments don’t. There’s no sense in packing the courts if you’re then going to establish a system where the President can do whatever he wants including ignoring the courts. Conservatives have established their long term base in the judicial system (which is beyond the reach of elections). Having done so, they want to keep the executive and legislative branches as weak as possible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mitch-mcconnell-small-time-defender-of-democracy/928159.md?page=1)