During the first Vice Presidential Debate yesterday Senator Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, refused to answer the question on whether or not her administration would ‘pack the court’. That would involve expanding the number of Supreme Court justices for the first time in more than 150 years, in response to the nomination of Amy Coney Barret by the Republican President & confirmation by the Republican dominated Senate.
Instead, Harris made this astonishing claim:
In 1864 — one of the, I think political heroes certainly of the President, I assume of you also, Mr. Vice President, is Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was up for re-election, and it was 27 days before the election. And a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln’s party was in charge, not only of the White House, but the Senate.
But Honest Abe said, “It’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States. And then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land.”
And so Joe and I are very clear: the American people are voting right now, and it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime.
The world’s fact checkers from both sides have been furiously scrambling to try and find where, in any recorded history, such a quote or even sentiment can be attributed to President Abraham Lincoln. The unanimous verdict is that quote is patently FALSE, as is the claim about Lincoln’s motivations.
What is a matter of history is Lincoln, seeking re-election in the middle of the American Civil War, held the potential for his nomination to SCOTUS as a dangling carrot for candidates who previously opposed him to instead campaign for him.
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase had resigned from Lincoln’s cabinet in June, and himself had aspirations of running as a candidate for President. In October later that year, then Chief Justice Roger B. Taney passed away at the same age as Justice Ginsburg did – 87. However, Congress had been in recess since 4 July, and would not reconvene again until early 5 December. The election was not until 8 November so it was actually impossible for Lincoln to have his pick confirmed before the election.
Instead, President Lincoln chose to make the vacant SCOTUS seat a useful part of his re-election strategy to help him govern post-war. He thus kept various factions happy by keeping them guessing until after the election, and more valuably got one of his high profile competitors, Chase, to campaign for him instead.
The National Review reports President Lincoln sent Salmon P. Chase’s name to the Senate the day after their very next session began, which confirmed his nomination the same day.
Kamala Harris has been caught telling an audacious lie she can’t possibly have thought was true, and the complicit silence from the corporate media is deafening.
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian writer & commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce's weekly The Church And State Show, also syndicated on ADH TV. Since 2016 Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to influence culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand. [more]
