title:  New Republican SCOTUS Tactic: Who Needs 9 Justices Anyway?
text: In a desperate bid to normalize the Republican Party s insane stance on keeping Scalia s seat on the Supreme Court empty, a new talking point is being tried out by conservatives: There s no time limit in the Constitution, and there s nothing magical about there being nine justices, [Dean] Reuter said during a panel meeting at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The country started out with six justices, we ve had as many as ten at some point in time,  he continued.  As recently as 2010, when Justice Elena Kagan came on the Court, she had been solicitor general so she recused herself in over a third of the cases (so) I don t see a sense of urgency. I fully expect this to be repeated over and over again and eventually mimicked by the corporate media. If there s one thing besides crippling America that the GOP is really good at, it s making their sabotage seem perfectly normal. The corporate media is always a willing accomplice to this charade as they will tie themselves into knots to avoid calling out the historic extremism of the right.A side benefit of using this kind of rhetoric to keep the 9th seat empty for so long is that when a Democrat wins in November, they ll already have normalized a reduced Court. It s like stacking the Court, adding seats to dilute the power of one set of Justices, but in reverse.On the flip side, if Republicans were to somehow win in November, I wouldn t be at all surprised if they suddenly  realized  that 9 Justices just aren t enough and we really should have 11, 7 of whom would just happen to be conservative. For a group that calls themselves  conservatives,  ostensibly the party that preserves the status quo, the American right wing has zero interest in preserving tradition, precedent or the Constitution. They re only interested in preserving their own power at any expense.Featured image via Rational Politics