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Home ›And then I wrote...
by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"
... that I watched this morning the swearing-in of the new Supreme Court judge, Neal Gorsuch.
I also watched large portions of his time before senators considering his nomination.
Except any sort of consideration in those hearings seemed lacking. Republicans knew that, thanks to former senate leader Democrat Harry Reid, they had the final word if necessary in the so-called nuclear option. Democrats, still angry over the Electoral College loss to President Trump, and the failure of their court candidate, Garland, in 2016 to even get a hearing in the senate, stayed firmly opposed.
Personally, I think the person who benefited most as a result of the actions is Garland! Democrats argued loudly and long that he should have at least been called before the senate.
They have a point.
But to what end? He was never going to win approval by the Republican dominated senate. Instead, he would have been subjected to two-plus days of partisan comments, with the result predetermined. Maybe even “borked” with ad hominem attacks a la Ted Kennedy.
There was a little rhyme that kept coming to my mind. I wanted to use it but could not remember who wrote it so could not attribute it properly. And despite modern day journalism, I still hold dear the comments by a former university J-school prof, who said if you can’t attribute, it doesn’t contribute.
But I looked in Bartlett ‘s and found there is an old adage attributed to anonymous 20th century sources that comes pretty close to what I remembered. I’ll give you that one.
“This is the grave of Mike O’Day Who died defending his right-of-way. His right was clear, his will was strong, But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.”
I have been waiting for some prominent Democrat to explain the death wish - the political suicide - of opposing Gorsuch and inviting the nuclear option.
Because there is a good possibility that President Trump may get to name another justice before his four year term expires, and with the nuclear option having been invoked, what’s to prevent him from naming someone even more of an originalist and more toward the right than Gorsuch seems to be?
Successful “mild” Republican-named justices have had a tendency to steer left once on the court. Do Democrats know something about Gorsuch that Republicans don’t know?