In the Old Testament book of Esther, King Xerxes of Persia was manipulated by his most trusted advisor, Haman, to grant him permission to exterminate the Jews in his kingdom. Esther, a Jewish woman, was a queen in his harem, presumably with the influence to get the king to change his mind and save the Jews. However, she could not go before the king unless she was summoned, and the king had not summoned her. If she went to him without a summons, it was likely the king would have her executed. But her uncle, Mordecai, pushed her to present herself without a summons. It was no time to wait around and see what happened, it was time to step up and save her people: “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. . . . And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14). Esther’s response was brave and heroic: “I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, America is now facing “such a time as this.” There are Senators, senate staffers, Republican operatives, conservative leaders, honest journalists (not an oxymoron quite yet), and citizens across America that have to decide what course of action they will take or support over the next six weeks. Now is the time to step up, work hard, and save the country.

Is that hyperbole? No, it’s definitely not. Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the Supreme Court has never had a solid conservative majority, despite the fact that six of the seven justices that voted for Roe were replaced by Republican presidents. By 1994, all seven were off the court and the justices were evenly split between liberal, conservative and centrists. By 2010, there were four liberals, four conservatives, and one centrist. Today, after the death of RBG, there is one open seat, three remaining liberals (Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor), four conservatives (Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Alito), with Roberts being either a centrist, a turncoat or a weakling.

With President Trump ready to appoint a replacement for RBG, every conservative and every Republican needs to stand up and help Trump get his appointment confirmed before the election. If we can do this, then, for the first time in over half a century, the court will have a conservative majority, and should be able to retain it for years to come.

It will not be an easy task. The left has been ratchetting up its outrage machine with every one of Trump’s appointments. When Gorsuch was appointed to replace Scalia, the left felt robbed because Scalia died during Obama’s last year in office and the Republican Senate would not give Obama’s nominee a hearing. However, his appointment was relatively tame because that was just a conservative replacing the strongest conservative mind on the Court. Then came the Kavanaugh nomination. The left went crazy because the stakes were higher. This was a conservative replacing the only swing vote left on the Court (Justice Kennedy). So, they played every trick in their book of dirty deeds to try to derail his appointment and push the issue past the 2018 mid-term elections where, in their crazy minds, the sane voters of the United States, seeing the danger of a Court applying the Constitution to its cases, would give the Democrats control of the House and Senate, unleashing their power to impeach Trump before he ruined the Court.

Whoever Trump appoints this week, this process will make the Kavanaugh debauchery look like a fun day out by the reflecting pool. Trump will nominate a conservative and, to the left’s contorted way of thinking, a conservative simply cannot replace the great liberal icon, RBG. They’ve already started fighting, even before they have a specific person to fight against. I’m sure you’ve heard the arguments: the great and selfless RBG has made it her dying wish to be appointed by the next President; Mitch McConnell refused to bring Obama’s nominee to the floor in the last year of his presidency and it would be hypocritical for him to bring Trump’s to the floor in the last couple of months of his first term; moving forward before the election will cause a Constitutional crisis that will force the left to riot and burn down cities.

Once a person is actually named, then the left will do what it does best: smear, slander, and destroy her life from her birth through the day after tomorrow.

Remember, the left believes America hates Trump and, like them, have been itching for a chance to get rid of him. That means they don’t need Trump to nominate a liberal, they just need to stop the Senate from appointing his nominee until Biden wins on Nov. 3. They believe they are in a much stronger position than with Kavanaugh because this election will give them both the White House and control of the Senate. So, they will fight. They must fight.

These are the stakes: a chance to have a conservative majority on the Court that has to be appointed through the fiercest, dirtiest confirmation battle that the country has ever seen. But the voters in this country have given the Republican Party a president in the White House and a majority in the Senate for such a time as this.

Every Republican senator needs to take stock of this moment. This is no time to stand on ceremony; this is no time to play the Washington game. Every argument the Democrats push is a lie. If the Democrats held the Senate during Obama’s last year in office, they would not have hesitated to fill Scalia’s seat, so they only think it’s wrong for the Republicans to do the same because they are not getting their way. RBG wants the next President to appoint her successor not because she was a principled statesman but because she was a liberal. Of course there will be violence in the streets; that’s what liberals do now.

Any Senator uncomfortable with Trump because he tweets mean words needs to watch video of what the Democrats did to Justice Kavanaugh or listen to any interview Hillary Clinton has done since she lost her election or observe the way Obama operated behind the scenes over his eight long years or take a long look at Biden’s and Harris’s careers. Trump’s rhetoric can be edgy, rude, and mean which rubs people the wrong way and hurts their feelings. The Democrats destroy people’s lives, burn down their homes and businesses, and throw away the Constitution to get their way.

Is it possible that those who stand with Trump will lose their seat or their stature or their invitations to Washington’s best parties? Yes, it’s possible. And if you perish, you perish. That’s exactly why you were elected. But it’s also possible that taking a stand in the face of the worst group of human beings I’ve ever seen hold office in this country will bring victory for America. The reason Republicans are still in the majority in the Senate is because, when the Dems launched their unprincipled, mean, and slanderous assault on Justice Kavanaugh, Republicans fought for him and put him on the Court.  

The fight to replace RBG will be much, much harder and we will have to show more unity and backbone than ever before. Nothing less will be acceptable at such a time as this.

Steve Matteucci has degrees in Economics, Law, Taxation, and Theology. His book, How to Be a Trustee: Practical Thinking on Settling a Living Trust, is available on Amazon.

Image credit: Rabod Commandeur (1890 - 1955); photo by Deror avi , via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0