The winner of this November’s presidential election may enjoy the chance to appoint three new Justices. By the end of the next president’s term in 2016, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83, Antonin Scalia and Justice Kennedy will turn 80, and Stephen Breyer will be 78. …

The prospect of a new liberal court displays the dangers of placing all the conservative eggs in the judicial basket. Republicans today should heed the advice of their party’s first, and greatest, president. “If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” Abraham Lincoln declared in his first inaugural address, “the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Only conservative control of both the executive and legislative branches can replace ObamaCare with sensible, pro-market health-care reforms. Winning a Senate majority could give Republicans the leverage to moderate Obama’s Supreme Court nominees in a second term. But it cannot override a presidential veto, one sure to greet any bills repealing ObamaCare. Conservative control of the White House and both houses of Congress will stop further adventures beyond the Constitution’s limits, relieving the need for a judicial salvation that may never come.