Listening to the podcast today, I couldn't help but chime in on the Clarence Thomas issue. The argument right now seems to be about whether or not Thomas' decisions on the court were influenced by a desire to protect his wife. Amanda Carpenter argues, convincingly, that it is almost impossible to think that he didn't know about his wif…
Listening to the podcast today, I couldn't help but chime in on the Clarence Thomas issue. The argument right now seems to be about whether or not Thomas' decisions on the court were influenced by a desire to protect his wife. Amanda Carpenter argues, convincingly, that it is almost impossible to think that he didn't know about his wife's deranged adherence to conspiracies and that he was almost certainly compromised. Will was actually being a bit sympathetic to Thomas, citing how difficult it must be to publicly deal with having a mentally ill wife.
What I think we may be ignoring here is the possibility that Thomas actually buys into some of this nonsense himself.
If that seems far fetched to some, consider one possibility for why Ginni Thomas's actions in the past didn't receive more outraged scrutiny than they did. Personally, I had heard about his wife's "activism" before, but paid little attention - because it hardly struck me as surprising. To me, the idea of a compromised Clarence Thomas seems nearly indistinguishable from an uncompromised one.
Think of all of the split decisions we've seen where one or more justices vote against partisan expectations. Who is the justice you *least* expect to go against form? If there is an 8-1 decision where the liberal justices are among the eight, I don't hesitate to guess who the "1" is, and I can't remember a time where I've been wrong. If it's a 7-2 decision, it's almost a guarantee that the "2" are Thomas and Alito. I'd be open to being proven wrong on this one, but I'd also be surprised.
The point is, unless my perception is very skewed, Clarence Thomas is easily the most partisan conservative on the court, the most likely to vote in a manner which benefits the Republican Party, regardless of whether it involves being judicially conservative or judicially activist. He always seems to be the one to come up with bizarre interpretations and theories - not a terrible thing per se, if it weren't the case that they always seem to be in service of advancing Republican political goals. If some of these batshit-insane Republican lawsuits had actually made it to the Supreme Court, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Thomas find some rationalization for supporting them.
So simply put, I see no reason to discount the possibility that Clarence Thomas not only knew about his wife's crackpottery, and tried to protect it from exposure and accountability, but that he also partially or fully supports it himself. We've seen plenty of supposedly sane and reasonable conservatives sell their souls in recent years - some without obvious political motivations and thus seemingly for the sake of their cultural standing in Republican circles. Do we really expect Clarence Thomas to be immune to this?
Listening to the podcast today, I couldn't help but chime in on the Clarence Thomas issue. The argument right now seems to be about whether or not Thomas' decisions on the court were influenced by a desire to protect his wife. Amanda Carpenter argues, convincingly, that it is almost impossible to think that he didn't know about his wife's deranged adherence to conspiracies and that he was almost certainly compromised. Will was actually being a bit sympathetic to Thomas, citing how difficult it must be to publicly deal with having a mentally ill wife.
What I think we may be ignoring here is the possibility that Thomas actually buys into some of this nonsense himself.
If that seems far fetched to some, consider one possibility for why Ginni Thomas's actions in the past didn't receive more outraged scrutiny than they did. Personally, I had heard about his wife's "activism" before, but paid little attention - because it hardly struck me as surprising. To me, the idea of a compromised Clarence Thomas seems nearly indistinguishable from an uncompromised one.
Think of all of the split decisions we've seen where one or more justices vote against partisan expectations. Who is the justice you *least* expect to go against form? If there is an 8-1 decision where the liberal justices are among the eight, I don't hesitate to guess who the "1" is, and I can't remember a time where I've been wrong. If it's a 7-2 decision, it's almost a guarantee that the "2" are Thomas and Alito. I'd be open to being proven wrong on this one, but I'd also be surprised.
The point is, unless my perception is very skewed, Clarence Thomas is easily the most partisan conservative on the court, the most likely to vote in a manner which benefits the Republican Party, regardless of whether it involves being judicially conservative or judicially activist. He always seems to be the one to come up with bizarre interpretations and theories - not a terrible thing per se, if it weren't the case that they always seem to be in service of advancing Republican political goals. If some of these batshit-insane Republican lawsuits had actually made it to the Supreme Court, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Thomas find some rationalization for supporting them.
So simply put, I see no reason to discount the possibility that Clarence Thomas not only knew about his wife's crackpottery, and tried to protect it from exposure and accountability, but that he also partially or fully supports it himself. We've seen plenty of supposedly sane and reasonable conservatives sell their souls in recent years - some without obvious political motivations and thus seemingly for the sake of their cultural standing in Republican circles. Do we really expect Clarence Thomas to be immune to this?