It won't do to pretend Neil Gorsuch is now on the Supreme Court because of high principle, even if his rulings on the Court demonstrate high principle. The whole thing was about a raw exercise in power. And given the stakes, raw power is what matters. Instead of Barack Obama putting a jurist on the court who would have rolled back the First, Second and Fourth Amendments to fit current leftist desires, Donald Trump put a jurist on the court who might protect those amendments. One can never be sure with justices appointed by Republican presidents. One can always assume a leftist jurist will vote in lockstep, because they always do.
Last year, Mitch McConnell rolled the dice. This time he won. And now that the filibuster is gone, it's likely Trump will have more justices to appoint. I could see him naming the replacements for four more jurists -- Kennedy, Breyer and Ginsburg are getting up there, and Thomas has made noises about retiring in the past. A lot of Democrats are thinking they will flip the Senate and/or the House in 2018, but I doubt that will happen. I would not be surprised if we start seeing a lot of 7-2 decisions in the future.
5 comments:
I'm very pleased by this though I don't know if it will result in concrete sanity. There is so much pressure pushing in the other direction. But I love that the Right is starting to fight.
Trump, the least conservative of 'conservatives', ever..., may be the salvation of conservatism.
Seriously, I didn't think Gorsuch would be the bridge the Dems would choose to die on, or to force the nuclear option onto the altar. For all the huffing and puffing, he is a respected jurist with a clean record, and replacing a conservative. I figured there'd be a lot of posturing to let the Administration know what was in store when it comes time to replace the next (and likely liberal) Justice and then there'd ultimately be a backroom deal to end the filibuster and allow a vote in exchange for a pledge (whatever those are worth in D.C.) to consider Merrick Garland for the next (even if he were voted down) - keeping the nuke genie in the bottle for a more crucial time (because genie's can be as unpredictable as Republican SCOTUS picks).
Could the skipping of Garland be that much of a factor in why they went this far? It just doesn't seem likely to me; I'd wager a significant portion of the Dems couldn't tell Merrick Garland from Wayne Garland. Apparently, though, petulance is the currency of as the Dems keep their base whipped up (and the money coming in).
I'd wager a significant portion of the Dems couldn't tell Merrick Garland from Wayne Garland.
I think they both pitched for the Tribe, but in Merrick's case it was Laurence Tribe.
Apparently, though, petulance is the currency of as the Dems keep their base whipped up (and the money coming in).
Give that man a cigar. The Dems are so in thrall to their paymasters and their lunatic base that they were duty bound to march into the bayonet.
It strikes me as soon as the Supremes see the 4th Amendment as a limitation on government, and not as some antenna from which penumbras might emanate, there are all kinds of significant decisions that will be in peril--Roe, obviously, but just as significantly, Evans v. Romer and Obergefell v. Hodges.
And, of course, it's long past time for Wickard v. Filburn to be overturned, though it probably will be on different grounds.
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