Editors at National Review Online explore U.S. Senate Democrats’ effort to derail Judge Neil Gorsuch‘s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge Neil Gorsuch is a mainstream conservative judge who has earned the respect of liberals in the legal world, and this fact has caused no end of frustration to Democrats who are resolved to block a vote on his nomination to the Supreme Court. Since they do not control the Senate, they could not do what the Republicans did last year and refuse to consider the nomination of a president they oppose. Hearings took place, and Gorsuch acquitted himself well. Democrats are having to invent spurious justifications for their opposition.
They have highlighted, and distorted, three of the judge’s decisions. …
… The theme running through all of these criticisms is that Democrats want Gorsuch to reach results that run counter to the law — a point that Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) put with characteristic artlessness in complaining about Gorsuch’s attention to “legalisms.” These criticisms thus testify to the judge’s fitness for the Supreme Court.
When they are not distorting cases, the Democrats have been unable to mount a coherent case. Thus they say that Judge Gorsuch is simultaneously too deferential to President Trump (because he has failed to denounce the man who nominated him) and not deferential enough (because he has said that executive-branch agencies have too much leeway to apply their own interpretations of the law).
And they have complained, oh have they complained, about the Republicans’ refusal to allow President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, to sit on the Supreme Court. The Constitution gave the Republicans the right not to schedule hearings for Garland. It gives the Democrats the right to complain about it, and even to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination in response. It also gives the Senate Republicans the power to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominees. Gorsuch is a good enough nominee, and the cause of getting judges committed to the rule of law is sufficiently important, that Republicans should exercise that power should it prove necessary.
