Pete Buttigieg is not hiding the ball: He wants to pack the Supreme Court. But his own statements supporting the already-radical idea don’t even make sense.
At Tuesday night’s CNN Democratic presidential debate, Buttigieg brought up his plan to increase the number of judges on the Supreme Court when discussion of Roe v. Wade and abortion came up. After both Joe Biden and Julián Castro (not exactly a moderate) distanced themselves from the radical, authoritarian plan, Buttigieg tried to explain their criticisms away, by saying his plan would “depoliticize the court” and that he wouldn’t just appoint judges that agree with him. But Buttigieg said this just one breath after saying he would only nominate judges who support abortion.
Who wants to tell “Mayor Pete” that this makes literally zero sense?
Pete Buttigieg just said, with a straight face, that he will simultaneously only appoint pro-abortion judges and depoliticize the court.
Who wants to tell him?#DemocraticDebates
— Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) October 16, 2019
Court-packing is already authoritarian and disturbing. It’s an attempt to assault judicial independence and find a workaround to force through unconstitutional policy proposals and seize more power for the executive branch. But Buttigieg’s latest arguments are just redundant and self-contradictory.
If the presidential contender really wants to make the case for a policy as radical as court-packing, he should probably get his talking points straight first.
