Senate Democrats, incensed the majority GOP last year declined to approve outgoing President Obama’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, unleashed their anger on President Trump’s pick, the highly lauded 10th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Neil Gorsuch. On…
Senate Democrats, incensed the majority GOP last year declined to approve outgoing President Obama’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, unleashed their anger on President Trump’s pick, the highly lauded 10th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Neil Gorsuch.
On Thursday, they refused to go along with what usually is a routine vote to halt debate, which forced the GOP to take up the “Reid Rule,” also called the nuclear option.
The procedure was used by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, in 2013 to defeat GOP minority opposition to nominations for lower-court judges. Reid changed the rules to require only a 51-vote majority to end debate and move to an up-or-down vote, instead of the usual 60-vote supermajority.
He left, however, the 60-vote rule in place for Supreme Court nominees, as Republicans, even though they disagreed with their politics, already had approved two Obama nominees, Sonja Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
But Reid’s decision to go “nuclear” set a precedent for the GOP to do the same now with Gorsuch.
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The ideological balance in the Supreme Court isn’t at issue, since Trump’s nominee, Gorsuch, would simply replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, regarded as an “originalist” who believes the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of the framers.
It is the next pick, which could occur during Trump’s presidency, that could change the balance.
Republicans obtained a 55-45 vote to end debate, short of the 60-vote threshold. Then Senate then voted along party lines 52-48 to drop that 60-vote requirement, setting up Gorsuch’s confirmation despite Democrats’ political objections.
A separate vote, an attempt to delay further consideration until April 24, failed 48-52.
The confirmation vote is expected to come as early as Friday.
Democrats have been accused of turning one of the few largely non-partisan processes left in Washington into a political football. Republicans and legal experts have assured the public that Gorsuch is one of the most distinguished and respected jurists available.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “This isn’t really about the nominee anyway. The opposition to this particularly nominee is more about the man who nominated him and the party he represents than the nominee himself.”
Democrats have been accused of refusing to accept the 2016 election results that put Trump in the Oval Office instead of the now twice-failed Democratic hopeful, Hillary Clinton.
While the Democrats said the fight began over Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, McConnell has said the issue began escalating some 30 years ago when judicial nominees of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush faced opposition from Democrats on political grounds.
The defeat of highly qualified nominee Judge Robert Bork by Democrats led to the creation of the term “Borking,” for a politicized campaign against a nominee.
The 55-45 vote included 51 Republicans for Gorsuch, as well as Democrats Michael Bennett from Gorsuch’s home state of Colorado, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. McConnell changed his vote to be in the majority, allowing him to call for a recount.
Trump won the latter three states in 2016, and senators are facing re-election in a constituency largely supportive of President Trump’s agenda.
WND reported days ago when far-left activist Cher told Democrats in the Senate to stop their obstructionism because their tantrum was making them look desperate.
In committee, Gorsuch’s nomination was approved 11-9 strictly along party lines, with all Democrats rejecting the candidate described as highly qualified by legal experts.
The White House earlier had publicly warned Democrats over their opposition.
“The baseless Democratic opposition to Judge Gorsuch shows that they would have the same opposition to ANY judge a Republican president nominates,” the White House said in a statement last weekend.
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The Democrats had wanted Obama’s pick so the court’s decisions would align more closely with their politics. Looming issues include gun control, environmental rules, transgender “rights,” voting rights, immigration, religious liberty, abortion and the death penalty.
That left-wing view prevailed when a narrow 5-4 court majority two years ago created same-sex “marriage” for the nation even though the Constitution doesn’t mention marriage, and just months earlier the court had ruled that the regulation of marriage belonged strictly to the states.
The White House pointed out that President Trump selected Gorsuch after getting advice from 29 senators, and “more than half of these were Democrats, including every Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
“Their consensus advice was to pick a respected mainstream judge,” the White House explained, and “Gorsuch is the very definition of a mainstream judge.”
“In the more than 2,700 cases he has participated in on the 10th Circuit, 97 percent of them have been unanimously decided. He was in the majority 99 percent of the time. He has the lowest rate of other judges dissenting from his opinions on the 10th Circuit. According to CRS, only 1.5 percent of Judge Gorsuch’s majority opinions were accompanied by a dissent—the lowest of any judge in the study.”
And the Supreme Court “has never overruled an opinion Judge Gorsuch authored, and only one time in the more than 2,700 cases he participated in, has the Supreme Court overruled an opinion where Judge Gorsuch sat on the panel.”
He was unanimously confirmed when he was elevated to the 10th Circuit a decade ago, the White House pointed out.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in a commentary published by CNN, wrote “arguments peddled by the left against [Gorsuch] are total straw men and non sequiturs.
