Erick Erickson has continued to bail out his leaky dinghy of ideology through claims of moral equivalence to the Democrats in a post of a few days ago. I had not responded to it because one of his points disturbed me and I was not aware of the context, so I held myself back – not to mention not having a lot of free time. Last night’s storm, however, means I won’t be gardening today, and I did finally get the necessary context as well.
His post reads like some of the right-wing emails I’ve dissected in the past – here’s an old favorite – and, technically, it did show up in my email, but it’s really a blog post. After some righteous incendiary indignation, he writes:
On June 29, 2021, five members of the United States Supreme Court said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not have the authority to issue a moratorium on evictions. Only Justice Kavanaugh decided that since the program was set to expire at the end of July, he’d let it finish out because of the legal principle of equity (different from critical theory’s equity).
So while five members of the Court let the moratorium continue, five members of the Court also declared the CDC had no power to do such a moratorium in the future without specific congressional authorization.
SCOTUS does not get to have it both ways; Kavanaugh probably should have ruled the other way, rather than giving in to expediency. But he didn’t, which makes Erickson’s upcoming indignity … specious.
Congress sat on its hands and did nothing until July 30, 2021, when progressive members began some performance art to demand Congress pass a moratorium. On August 1, 2021, Nancy Pelosi blamed the CDC for not extending the moratorium and never mentioned the Supreme Court’s decision.
Performance art and sat on its hands are lazy denigratives used by those who are desperate to portray inaction as somehow indicative of incompetency – or worse. A judicious observer doesn’t walk down that path; instead, they try to find a fair & balanced[1] reading of the motivations for a given behavior.
In this case, we’re talking about the pandemic. I think it’s fair to assume that the assumption since the SCOTUS decision was that the Administration could implement the ban; and, even if not, getting the ban through the Senate might prove to be a battle better fought elsewhere.
And why are we discussing this at all? Oh, yeah: the unvaccinated, who are mostly, but not all (see: RFK, Jr.), conservatives, are keeping the pandemic going, which in turn impacts the economy as the delta variant emerges, rendering the vaccines less effective against mutation aka variant concerns, and thus making the vulnerable less likely to return to work. I should not be surprised if key leaders claimed they didn’t anticipate the need for a furthering of a ban that complicates Federal response and hurts the economic recovery, at least for those who depend on rental income.
But, on August 3rd, Joe Biden decided to extend the moratorium through executive power even while admitting it was unconstitutional. He wants to put the blame on the Supreme Court and take blame away from the Democrats.
But the rule of law is clear. One can both feel sorry for those who will be evicted and also concurrently recognize the CDC really does not have the power to issue a moratorium on evictions without congressional legislation.
This is the item that concerned me. Is this what really happened? Turns out there’s more context that turns Erickson’s point into dust:
After White House legal advisers found he could not extend a national eviction moratorium, President Biden told Chief of Staff Ron Klain to seek the advice of Harvard law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe about whether an alternative legal basis could be devised for protecting struggling renters across the country, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The phone call between Klain and Tribe — held Sunday amid a national outcry over the expiry of the moratorium — set in motion a rapid reversal of the administration’s legal position that it could not extend the eviction ban. Tribe suggested to Klain and White House Counsel Dana Remus that the administration could impose a new and different moratorium, rather than try to extend the original ban in potential defiance of a warning from Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the person said. [WaPo]
I’m no lawyer, but I think Kavanaugh’s opinion does not apply. And so Erickson’s point implodes. But he lumbers onward, stating his thesis:
The left, however, does not care about the rule of law. They only used the phrase when Trump was President. Therein lies the problem.
The opposition is hypocritical! And off the rail he goes, understandably desperate to blame the left for the transgressions of the right:
For all the talk about the right disrespecting the rule of law and embracing authoritarianism, the right is only behaving as the left has long behaved. In fact, there is consistently more respect on the right for the rule of law than the left has had — including among the judicial class.
The bit about the judicial class is interesting, as even Trump-appointed (or -aligned) judges rejected, for the most part, the former President’s hysterical claims concerning the election. But are lawyers are part of the judicial class? If so, the actions of L. Lyn Wood, Sydney Powell, Rudy Guiliani, and a host of former and current Trump lawyers, and various members and officials of the Federalist Society certainly are counterexamples.
But, taken overall, that paragraph is another example of Erickson wanting to have it both ways – Oh, yeah, we do disrespect the rule of law, except when we don’t! For the forward, it’s really just a null argument designed to stir up anger and stop the reasoning process.
For Joe Biden to do something everyone knows is unconstitutional and for him to even go so far as to admit it and for the left to cheer really does give away the game. It was always about power, never actually about the rule of law.
And now you understand why so many on the right have been moving away from the rule of law and towards some level of authoritarianism. It didn’t happen in a vacuum but in response to the left’s behavior. It was the reaction to the left’s action.
Sorry, but no. From this independent vantage point, both sides push legal envelopes all the time – Bush did it, Obama did it, Trump did it, and so much legislation pushes envelopes as well. Here, Biden is clearly relying on legal advice from an eminent Constitutional scholar who opines that he can do what he did. This is clearly a refutation of Erickson’s point.
And I find it hard – no, impossible – to find some sort of lefty insurrection during my lifetime. There’d disappointment, grumbling, protests, self-righteous whining, but no insurrections.
Erickson’s just propagandizing here. It’s all reminiscent of the right wing emails I used to see so much of. And it’s an example of a growing trend in Republican circles: Blame the lefties for our sins! Here’s Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Minority whip, working this line of attack that is so reminiscent of the Trumpian habit of projecting his sins on his opponents. The various claims in the video have been debunked, of course.
1 Yes, that is a bit of humor at the expense of Erickson and Fox News.
