WASHINGTON - The announcement Monday that Chief Justice William Rehnquist had been hospitalized for treatment of thyroid cancer is one of those 11th-hour events that has the potential to tip the presidential election to one candidate or the other.The impact is not as clear as a scandal or a gaffe, but Rehnquist’s illness will powerfully focus the minds of activists in Washington and perhaps some voters in the battleground states on the great likelihood that there will be one or two vacancies on the Supreme Court during the next president’s term.
Court watchers already knew that, of course, but Rehnquist’s illness makes it personal and sounds like an alarm clock for those who may have overslept.
For highly motivated partisans on both sides, do they really need another motivator to get them to the polls? Not likely, but if they did, now they’ve got one.
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