UPDATED May 5 at 3 pm – I found the following comments from conservative Republican, former Delegate Tim Anderson about Ken Cuccinelli to be striking and thought they were worth noting.
“Well, look, Ken Cuccinelli was the former Virginia Attorney General. He’s no dummy. He’s a very smart, bright, articulate lawyer. And I’m not disparaging him in any way. What I’m worried about, though, is that I think he is in an echo chamber where he is only talking to people that agree with him, and he has become emboldened in his legal conclusions of what is right or wrong. I hope Ken Cuccinelli is right. I do. I hope that he is 100% right. I hope we get a 7-0 reversal and this gerrymandering thing is dead. I hope he’s right. But I don’t like when lawyers say ‘100% guaranteed, we’re going to win, all seven judges, even the three that are Democrats are going to go our way’. I don’t like that. I think that is that is confidence that is impossible to legitimately predict. I just can’t imagine. We just had a Supreme Court justice appointed within this past year who is absolutely a Democrat. I don’t think he’s going to go that way. I just don’t think he’s going to go that way. I think he’s going to find other reason. And so, I hope we win. I do hope we win. But I just don’t like it. I don’t like how he’s posturing like this, why it’s 7-0 and it’s a certainty. Because what it’ll do is if it doesn’t go our way, then what you’re going to see is people claiming that the judicial branch is illegitimate or it’s politically ‘compromised’. That’s all stuff that that is no good. I think what you can say and hopefully take more of a moderate position like I’m taking, is that I think the Republicans have put up a great argument and great facts and I also think the Democrats have put up great arguments and great facts, and this is not a easy thing for these justices to have to decide. And we can just hope and pray that the justices see it our way. But we also have to recognize that if they don’t, that is probably more judicial restraint which is what we would want normally out of out of conservative justices.”
I don’t normally want to amplify anything by MAGA extremists, nutjobs, etc., such as former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli – by far the worst Attorney General in Virginia history. But the following comments really jumped out at me for a couple reasons. First off, they’re batsh**-crazy, of course, and “entertaining” in a dark, warped way I suppose. More importantly and substantively, they are HIGHLY revealing of the warped, far-right “echo-chamber” mindset Republicans have embraced at this point.
Second, what Cuccinelli (aka, “the Cooch”) is saying here about how he thinks the Virginia Supreme Court might rule on the redistricting case, and WHY they might rule that way, seems newsworthy, if for no other reason than that this guy was the Attorney General of Virginia from 2010 to 2014, plus of course the VA GOP’s nominee for governor in 2013 (he barely lost to Terry McAuliffe, thank goodness), and also because presumably his way of looking at this isn’t much different than many other Virginia Republicans. Which is very disturbing, of course, but it’s also the unfortunate, “upside-down” reality we find ourselves in right now…
So with that, here’s what “the Cooch” had to say, with my comments in parentheses/bold/green following each point.
- Asked if there’s an “ugly political influence being wielded here given that these justices don’t have lifetime appointments like the United States Supreme Court justices,” Cuccinelli said: 1) there’s no good way to select judges (e.g., electing them), but Virginia has the “least-bad” way (the General Assembly electing them); 2) going forward, given that we supposedly “have the most radical Marxist legislature we’ve ever had,” that tradition “is probably going to go out the window.” (First off, is there literally ANY evidence that “ugly political influence” is being wielded here” [by Democrats] towards the VA Supreme Court justices? To put it mildly, that seems HIGHLY unlikely, given that it would be totally unethical for a Supreme Court justice to take a phone call or input from anybody in the legislature while this case is pending. Of course, people can make speeches and post on social media, and we HAVE seen some of that by Virginia Republicans giving irresponsible speeches and/or posting inflammatory stuff on social media…so there’s that. But Democrats? Any evidence whatsoever??? Not that I’m aware; to the contrary, if there’s any pressure being put on the Virginia Supreme Court justices, it’s coming from Virginia Republicans, not from Democrats. As for Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly being “radical Marxist,” that’s just loony-tunes stuff, totally crackpot. In fact, all the evidence demonstrates that it’s the *REPUBLICAN* Party that’s radicalized to the extreme right over the past couple decades, while Democrats have *at most* moved slightly left of center…but not even CLOSE to being “Marxist” or “radical.” But yeah, that’s how the Cuccinellis of the world rationalize their own extremism, by psychologically “projecting” onto Democrats, then claiming they have no choice but to “fight fire with fire” or whatever. Very dangerous.)
- On the Virginia Supreme Court, Cuccinelli argues that the justices are relatively non-political (for whatever reason, Cuccinelli singles out Justice Thomas Mann as an exception to this rule), arguing that Chief Justice Cleo Powell “takes her judging very very seriously and she carries herself very respectfully.” So Cuccinelli argues, given his (mistaken) belief that “the General Assembly has so brazenly trampled the requirements of the state constitution in enacting a proposed amendment,” Justice Powell will likely vote to “uphold the state constitution and reject the referendum.” Cuccinelli even predicts that “I would not be surprised…to see a 7-0 vote here” to overturn the redistricting referendum results. (So…yeah, this is how Virginia Republicans think, apparently, that what Trump’s going at the national level, what happened in Texas, what just happened in Florida, etc., is all NOT brazenly trampling the constitution, but Virginia Democrats fighting back IS brazengly trampling the constitution. As for Cuccinelli’s prediction of a 7-0 vote to overturn the will of the voters, I think most of us would be highly surprised – shocked, really – at such an outcome, but we’ll see what happens, hopefully in the next few days.)
Finally, I’d just point out that there are few people in Virginia, or possibly America, who have been wrong on the law (and also on policy, politics, etc.) more often than Ken Cuccinelli. So that should give us some hope right there…
