Five to four could have gone the other way.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 6/29/18

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For decades, conservatives – including, almost to a person, conservatives who remain resolutely Never Trump – have railed against the relentless growth of government. Countless nominally conservative politicians have campaigned on the promise to shrink government only to fail miserably.

Shrinking government is never easy. Government by its nature seeks to expand itself. But there’s nevertheless a chance now that it just got easier.

In a stunning blow to public employee unions, the Supreme Court just handed down a decision in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee who refused to join the union. The ruling strikes down an Illinois state law that compelled state employees to pay union dues even if they don’t wish to join the union.

The ruling is a hammer blow to public employee unions and a big win for taxpayers. It goes a long way toward interrupting the feedback loop between public employee unions and liberal politicians. For decades, unions have been extracting dues from public employees, carving huge campaign contributions out of those dues to give to liberal, union supporting Democrats, who have in turn enacted laws and voted for budgets that have expanded the ranks and paychecks of dues-paying unionized government employees.

The results have been disastrous. California and Illinois, two of the worst offenders, are for all intents bankrupt. Crushing pension liabilities in states like Connecticut and New York now rest on the shoulders of taxpayers yet unborn.

But the shameless politicians who have benefited from union contributions and who have in return aided and abetted the plunging of their states and cities into fiscal ruin have, at last, now hit a road block.

The unions are howling. The National Education Association, which is not only the largest teachers union in the country but is also the largest union period, has slashed its budget. Politicians in places like New York and New Jersey are looking for ways to weasel around the ruling.

Their desperation speaks volumes. With reduced dues income, it will be more difficult to buy the cooperation of liberal politicians. Absent the steady stream of campaign cash, politicians will be less available and less willing to do the bidding of public employees.

All of which should have – at the very minimum – the very salubrious effect of at least reducing the rate at which public payrolls expand.

This Supreme Court decision went 5-4 thanks to the fact that Donald Trump got to appoint Neil Gorsuch. Had Hillary Clinton won the presidential election, it would have also been 5-4, but 5-4 the other way.

So I now ask you Never Trumpers: Do you despise Trump so deeply that you would have been willing to forgo this big win? Does your loathing extend to forfeiting the future Supreme Court appointments that Donald Trump will make?

Would you be offended if I asked you if you really are a conservative at all?