It is time for conservative strategists to stop wringing their hands over the ages of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and start looking at the real liability on the Supreme Court. The panic over aging stalwarts is a distraction from a much deeper, more insidious problem: the disappointing, compromise-driven job performance of Amy Coney Barrett. If the America First movement wants to actually secure its constitutional victories, the pressure needs to shift entirely to her.
Thomas and Alito are battle-hardened originalists who have spent decades taking the hardest hits from the media without flinching. Their votes are steel. Pressuring them to step aside for fear of some future electoral shift is not only insulting but strategically foolish. You do not bench your best players when the game is on the line.
Barrett, on the other hand, has spent her relatively short tenure acting more concerned with the approval of institutional elites than the text of the Constitution. Her performance has been a series of frustrating, squishy compromises and procedural hand-wringing. Instead of standing firm with the solid originalist block, she has repeatedly drifted toward the center to appease mainstream sensibilities.
This mediocre performance is exactly why she is the one who must be pressured to step down. While she is young, that longevity is a curse if those next thirty years are spent diluting crucial rulings. The prospect of a compromised, lukewarm institutionalist occupying a critical seat for the next generation is the true disaster. That is the vacancy that should be unthinkable to any serious American.
If Barrett cannot handle the heat of the ideological battle, she should make room for someone who can. The Supreme Court is not a place for careerist reputation management or polite society consensus. If she remains unwilling to hold the line, the political pressure to vacate her seat must become unbearable.
