Oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday over the president’s power to remove the commissioners of independent agencies left little doubt that its Republican-appointed justices are about to fundamentally reorder our system of government. They appear ready to eliminate most pockets of expertise and nonpartisanship that we rely on as stewards of important economic, political, scientific, and regulatory power.
They will do this, if this morning’s arguments are any indication, without grappling with the predictable and disastrous fallout, with the endpoint of their own logic, or the historical record to the contrary. Instead, the six Republican appointees appear ready to race headlong into a Trumpian future in which no agency or decision is beyond the reach of the precedent’s political cronies.
“You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed Monday, “and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”
Ronnie Raygun’s admin started the ball rolling on so many awful things.
However, some of what really motivated the extremist right wing predates that - the Watergate stuff infuriated the same sort of people that make up today’s base, and not because Nixon committed crimes, but that Nixon eventually was forced out of office because those crimes were uncovered and reported on. They vowed to construct their own parallel Orwellian mediaverse to counter factual reporting - they actively set out to create fake news, and now they have the gall to call anyone else “fake news”.
And, always, ever since the first red scare (1917) at least, you’ve always had very fringe individuals and groups and plots, from the fascist plot to have corporations seize the white house (Business Plot - 1933) and Father Coughlin and The John Birch Society, we have always had conservatives trying to ruin this country.
But yeah, a whole lot of stupid conservative schemes wormed their way into our institutions under Ronnie Raygun. Until Donvict, anyway, he was probably the very worst president in history. Certainly he had the most criminal administration in history, objectively.