“Election have consequences,” exclaimed our face-shootingest Veep, Dick Cheney. Just a few years later, President Obama flipped the script, springing that phrase on Eric Cantor during negotiations with Congress. Two more different men you could not imagine, cousins or not, but they were both right. As we were reminded over the last six years, the President is the driving force of the country, even when the other branches swing in the opposite direction.

In her latest WSJ column, Peggy Noonan acknowledges that President Obama has the Constitutional right to nominate a successor for Justice Scalia, but she really, really wishes he wouldn’t. In this fractious nation, she argues, the Supreme Court should be 5-4 in the favor of conservatives or liberals. Funny thing is, that’s what the math would be if Obama offered up a justice who was progressive.

The worse part of the piece is that Noonan suggests Americans who’ve pushed for rights are inciting trouble by working for equality. They’re minting new radicals with each gain they make. Donald Trump’s icy grip on the GOP’s shoulders has certainly been enabled by his activating the bigotry of those who want to make America white again, but he didn’t create that prejudice. He’s just an opportunist poking a wound that was already open. In fact, immigration reform wasn’t considered progressive when Ronald Reagan, Noonan’s boss, was in office. The party has just regressed so far that yesterday’s benchmarks now seem a bridge too far.

From Noonan:

For President Obama to leave the Scalia replacement to the next president would be an act of prudence and democratic courtesy. He of course says he will put a nominee forward. What a thing it would be if he changed his mind.

The Republican Senate has every right by law and precedent to block his nominee. They moved quickly after Scalia’s death, and with startling unanimity, to announce they would do so. This had the virtue of clarity and the defect of aggression. Still, their ultimate stand is right.

It should be noted there’s no reason to believe leaving it to the people will guarantee conservative outcomes.

I close with a thought about an aspect of modern leftism that is part of the context here.

There is something increasingly unappeasable in the left. This is something conservatives and others have come to fear, that progressives now accept no limits. We can’t just have court-ordered legalized abortion across the land, we have to have it up to the point of birth, and taxpayers have to pay for it. It’s not enough to win same-sex marriage, you’ve got to personally approve of it and if you publicly resist you’ll be ruined. It’s not enough that we have publicly funded contraceptives, the nuns have to provide them.

This unappeasable spirit always turns to the courts to have its way.

If progressives were wise they would step back, accept their victories, take a breath and turn to the idea of solidifying gains, of heroic patience, of being peaceable.

Don’t make them bake the cake. Don’t make them accept the progressive replacement for Scalia. Leave the nuns alone.

Progressives have no idea how fragile it all is. That’s why they feel free to be unappeasable. They don’t know what they’re grinding down.

They think America has endless give. But America is composed of humans, and they do not have endless give.

Isn’t that what we’re seeing this year in the political realm? That they don’t have endless give? And we’ll be seeing more of it.•