I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts on this (pardon the title gore)
Saving 'The List' Trumps Getting Cruz on the Court
TL,DR: it's a very conservative website & an article by a very conservative author, which argues in favor of the principle behind Trump releasing a list of who he would consider acceptable nominees for the Supreme Court once elected.
This is in the context of whether Ted Cruz should be Trump's nominee to replace Antonin Scalia. (Again: very conservative site). I'm more curious about the principle of the thing, and whether "preemptively stating who you would pick for the Court" would be a positive move for us in this quest.
On the 'for' side: more transparency (fits our campaign theme), more newsworthy (extra headlines = poll boost), reassurance to social conservatives (about our stance & trustworthiness on social issues like abortion), more aura of 'real leader' (since other candidates would probably follow our lead...)
On the 'against' side: more transparency (no wiggle room: if we don't include pro-life justices, we won't win, but if we do, we would be attacked for it during the general election), more clay feet (breaking this promise might ruin Pataki's chances of a second term, like George HW Bush's "no more taxes" promise), more research busywork (have to prepare the list & research potential nominees in the first place), more politicization of the Supreme Court (kinda inevitable at this point, but generally harmful to the republic in my opinion).
Thoughts?
Saving 'The List' Trumps Getting Cruz on the Court
TL,DR: it's a very conservative website & an article by a very conservative author, which argues in favor of the principle behind Trump releasing a list of who he would consider acceptable nominees for the Supreme Court once elected.
This is in the context of whether Ted Cruz should be Trump's nominee to replace Antonin Scalia. (Again: very conservative site). I'm more curious about the principle of the thing, and whether "preemptively stating who you would pick for the Court" would be a positive move for us in this quest.
On the 'for' side: more transparency (fits our campaign theme), more newsworthy (extra headlines = poll boost), reassurance to social conservatives (about our stance & trustworthiness on social issues like abortion), more aura of 'real leader' (since other candidates would probably follow our lead...)
On the 'against' side: more transparency (no wiggle room: if we don't include pro-life justices, we won't win, but if we do, we would be attacked for it during the general election), more clay feet (breaking this promise might ruin Pataki's chances of a second term, like George HW Bush's "no more taxes" promise), more research busywork (have to prepare the list & research potential nominees in the first place), more politicization of the Supreme Court (kinda inevitable at this point, but generally harmful to the republic in my opinion).
Thoughts?
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Glad to see this back, and glad the results are sorted out. One concern: there seem to be a fair few 'dropped numbers' that were on the spreadsheet but not in your above post. Did you delete them intentionally (to avoid spoilers) or was that unintentional?
