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Oct. 6, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
07:02
Senator Ted Cruz: "One Vote Away" on the Supreme Court
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Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz.
By the way, do you know if there's an audible version of your book?
So there is an audible version of the book.
It's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble or anywhere you get books.
And I'll tell you, actually, just today, the book is the number one bestseller in the country on Amazon.
We're number two on Barnes and Noble.
So it's been really...
A lot of people have been going and getting it, and part of it is because what I try to do in the book, Dennis, is take people really behind the scenes and behind the curtain of what happens at the Supreme Court.
So every chapter of the book is on a different Supreme Court liberty.
And I tell the inside story, you know, before I was in the Senate, my career was as a Supreme Court litigator, so I argued cases before the court.
And so I tell war stories.
And so we talk about free speech and religious liberty and the Second Amendment and U.S. sovereignty and democracy and elections.
And I try to help people.
You know, for a lot of folks, the court is hard to understand.
It's confusing.
You know it's important, but you don't necessarily understand the players and what's going on.
And I try to make this very readable and interesting.
You don't have to be a lawyer to enjoy it, but if you want to know what's going on at the court, if you want to know really the stakes of this 2020 election, And I think the single most important issue in this election is who the Supreme Court justices will be going forward and why, on issue after issue, for our fundamental rights, that they're just one vote away from being taken away.
And if you want to also understand the enormous stakes of this epic gladiatorial battle over Judge Amy Coney Barrett that we're in the middle of right now, I think this book helps give you the information to be able to talk with your friends and families and around the water cooler and really understand what's going on.
Somebody called me last week, Senator, and said, Dennis, are you aware that if she is confirmed, there will be six Catholics on the Supreme Court?
To which I said, so what?
I'm a Jew.
I couldn't care less.
I'll take nine, anybody who's conservative.
It's so funny that these are things that bother people.
You're not Catholic.
You don't care.
Look, what I care is that we have judges that follow the Constitution.
Exactly, exactly.
And there's a big difference.
The left views these as partisan warriors.
They view the Supreme Court just as another legislature.
And this stems from the 1960s, where they decided to take over the courts.
And the reason they did it is because their ideas were not popular.
They couldn't get them through actual elections and convince elected legislators.
So they said, well, let's just get five lawyers in robes to decree this outcome for the whole country.
And on the right, which is one of the things that in the political debate, there's a disconnect.
Which is the media doesn't understand that conservatives don't want justices who dictate conservative outcomes.
For example, one of the chapters in the book is on school choice.
I am passionate about school choice.
I think it is the most important civil rights issue of this century.
I don't want a Supreme Court that mandates school choice.
I think it's absolutely the right policy.
I fight for it in the Senate, and the legislature should adopt it.
But do you know that we're one vote away from the Supreme Court?
Striking down every single school choice program in America, that the left wants to use the court to ban it, to say, you can't choose to give kids in struggling schools a scholarship and a way out.
And it's a real difference between following the Constitution versus trying to abuse the court and turn it into a partisan legislature.
On to another issue for a moment while I have you.
If the Democrats win a Senate majority, even by one vote, can they then simply install two new states?
So they can.
Adding a state does not take a constitutional amendment.
It takes simple legislation.
Of a majority?
Of a majority of one?
Well, to do it, they would have to end the Senate filibuster, which I believe they would.
So if the Democrats win in November, if we wake up and we've got Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi running into everything, I think Schumer almost immediately will end the filibuster in the Senate, which means the minority that in the Senate is no longer able to stop their radical agenda.
Once they do that, I think adding two states, adding the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico will be one of the first things on their agenda.
And their reason is nakedly and crassly political.
They believe that will give them four new Democratic senators.
Yes, which is all they need.
That's like a permanent majority in our lifetime.
That is their plan.
And also packing the Supreme Court.
They've been very open about that they want to increase the number of justices on the court.
And we saw...
In the first debate, Joe Biden refused to answer the question because his base is demanding the answer be yes, and that would destroy the court, and yet that's where the left is.
I must admit, though, I found it shocking when I learned that all it takes to admit a state is a 51-49 vote.
So, on D.C., there is a constitutional argument, because the Constitution specifies that there has to be a district for the federal government.
So it depends how they draft it.
There will almost surely be litigation over D.C. The way they've done it is very clever, which is they've still created a D.C. that's basically the Capitol building and a couple of other buildings.
And they made all the rest of D.C. a brand new state around it.
That's how they're trying to get around the constitutional prohibition.
But that being said, as a general matter, admitting a new state, Puerto Rico, for example, it's clear it can be done by legislation.
What did Harry Reid end, if not the filibuster?
So Harry Reid ended the filibuster for judges and executive nominees.
The nomination side, but not on the legislation side.
So we still have the filibuster.
If you want to pass a piece of legislation, it takes 60 votes.
And right now, the Democrats use the filibuster all the time to stop good legislation.
But what it is prevented is, in times of Democratic majorities, it is prevented massive damage.
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