Anthony Kennedy Just Ruined the SCOTUS For A Generation

With the recent announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy's forthcoming retirement, the future of the SCOTUS has been brought into absolute disarray. Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.

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The Supreme Court Justice, Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement this week paving the way for a Republican super majority of the court. That's a very scary thing considering that Ginsburg is in really, really tough shape.

I mean, at this point-

I'm already ... The loss of one is bad enough.

Yeah, I mean so we're looking at basically a solid five, four. And to be honest, this last term of the court pretty much everything has been a five, four with Kennedy going for the Republicans, he's gotten a far more conservative with age.

Yeah. You know what? I've been following Kennedy for a long, long time. And this idea, "Well, he's the swing judge for us, and he's going to help us out" count the times that that really has happened. He's a conservative. You know, he likes to dress up maybe every now and then on a liberal, mostly a social issue. It's never going to be an issue were corporations are trying to steal from consumers. He's going to go with the corporation every time. It's never going to be where government is allowed to spy on us. He's going to the government every time. He's not a great justice, I mean let's be frank about it.

And he's not that powerful in his influence with this court. I don't really see this as a big deal. I mean other than the fact we knew we were going to lose ... We knew we were going to lose a ... I mean, at this point you got a five, four. Okay? So you're going to replace him with a conservative, you got a five, four. The real problem comes in is when you lose Ginsburg and it's almost ... You know, try to reverse that trend is a generational kind of problem.

It really is. And see, that's the thing that I think the conservatives also understand better than the democrats do, is that you put somebody a little bit younger on that court, and then you've got a solid 20 to possibly 30 years of not being able to touch that seat. Bush did it with Alito and Roberts. Younger folk, Obama not so much. I mean he picked decent judges, I will give him that. But, they're not people who are still going to be on that bench in 20 years. Gorsuch could be, that Trump put in there this year. So-

Yeah, I remember the discussion when Obama was making his appointments, if Obama were playing chess with Republicans, he would get clobbered. And that was one of the issues. You'd say, "Well why don't you just ... Don't you see what's happening? We're losing here, we got to have some young people on there" it's not like these women that he appointed are ancient, they're not. I mean, I'm not saying that. But from the standpoint of planning down the road, and that was always the problem with Obama as a strategist. He never got it as a strategist. Unfortunately Trump does. We're going to start seeing some of these next ... I say two appointments, we're going to see ... My prediction is we'll see two appointments before 2020. One's going to be Kennedy, and my guess would be Ginsburg.

Well, when like you said though, this is a ... You lose it for a generation.

Right.

Just like these other court appointments that Democrats have ignored for 10 years now, you lose them for a generation.

Well, let's talk about that. You know, people don't understand, it's not all about SCOTUS.

Right.

It's about that trial judge that was appointed that doesn't even understand what evidence is, has never done anything for consumers, has never been a judge at all in any other capacity, typically was a politico that came up through ranks, and they appoint him as a trial judge. Or the appellate judge, it's the same thing. And everybody doesn't realize that's where the real damage is done. Because where it comes to policy, White House can make all the policy they want if a judge wants to take it away, they can hold it up for a very long time. And I knew we just saw this with the ... You know, we see it all the time. We see the deconstruction of Obama's ... of his whole effort to change healthcare. Deconstructed. Part by part.