When he ran for president the second time almost half a century ago, Richard M. Nixon made Earl Warren’s Supreme Court a target of his campaign. It was a brilliant move. … I thought of Nixon last week as I watched the parade of Republican would-be presidents outdoing one another in denouncing the “lawless” and “brazen” Supreme Court. …
Not that any of the Republicans have asked me for advice, but I’ll give them some anyway: Fomenting backlash is not a winning strategy. Just as fire needs oxygen, stoking public anger against the Supreme Court can’t succeed in a vacuum. Backlash needs to be fed and sustained by fear: fear of crime; fear of a threat to “our Southern way of life”; fear, in the case of abortion, of a revolution in women’s traditional role in the family and in society.
And what, exactly, are people supposed to be afraid of now? A same-sex married couple with affordable health insurance? CONT.
Linda Greenhouse, New York Times