It seems really stupid to me for the Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch. It essentially sends the message, “We will not approve any judge who is not a liberal Democrat and who will not impose our policy preferences from the bench.” Which makes it politically easy for the Republicans to nuke the filibuster and over the next eight years — because the Democrats are right now doing everything they can to ensure Trump’s re-election — ensure that the next two or three judges are straightforward right-wing ideologues who will drool at the thought of overturning Roe v. Wade. Once you prove you are utterly unreasonable, people simply stop trying to reason with you; once you prove that under no circumstances will you cooperate or compromise, people who have the power to do so simply run over you.
If the Democrats played nicely with Gorsuch, and then the next person Trump nominated was a true ideologue, then when the Democrats trotted out the filibuster they would have a platform to say to centrist voters, “We can be reasonable when a reasonable candidate is proposed but this guy isn’t reasonable,” and the Republicans would pay a political price if in that case they threw away the filibuster. But now they’re doing to the filibuster the same thing they’ve done to the words “nazi” and “fascist” and “racist” — since no matter what you do SJW’s will call you a racist nazi fascist, you just arrange matters so that they don’t have the power to bully you (which was the primary reason lots of people who despise Trump voted for him anyway), and then you proceed with your life completely ignoring them.
And what happens if the Democrats DO manage to take the Presidency in the next election? They’re not going to take the Senate; that will be even more under Republican control than it is now. The Republicans put consideration of Gardner off until after the election with the excuse that they were giving the American people the opportunity to speak. Some of my friends think it was a valid thing to do and others of my friends think it was complete b.s. But the Democrats don’t even have THAT excuse. They are pretty much saying, “Screw the American people’s verdict; we are never going to allow any judge who is not a far Leftist onto the Court.” So what then stops the Republicans from quietly waiting until Ginsberg retires in order to be replaced by the Democratic President — and then the Republicans say, “Well, you have made it clear that under no circumstances will you willingly allow a Republican President to put anybody on the Supreme Court who doesn’t share your ideology…so if you want us to let somebody on the Supreme Court who doesn’t fit OUR ideology, go win some elections, because as long as we’re in the majority no Democratic nominee gets confirmed to SCOTUS.” Then you have an eight-judge Supreme Court for four years that is three liberals, four conservatives, and Kennedy, and you NEVER WIN the gay-marriage cases. If Breyer has a stroke then the Republicans still simply refuse to confirm anybody and now it’s two liberals plus Kennedy and you not only never win, you ALWAYS LOSE — you can’t even get a tie. It’s as though the Democrats think they can say, “We will never play nice when we lose,” and then when they get some power back the rest of country will play nice with them.
In short, the rules the Democrats are now creating for themselves are simply this: the only way you get a Supreme Court judge confirmed, is for the same party to have both the White House and the Senate, and for that party to simply bulldoze its way over the other party, in pretty much exactly the way the Democrats unilaterally imposed Obamacare. A few years ago, watching Harry Reid dismantle the minority protections in the Senate, I kept saying, “The Democrats act like they are actually stupid enough to believe they will never again lose an election.” But now the Democrats HAVE lost elections all over the place; they have lost the White House, both houses of Congress, most of the state governments…and in 2018 it gets WORSE. And yet they are STILL acting as though they will never lose an election. They must be the stupidest people God ever put on this earth.
It is absolutely insane for the Democrats to filibuster THIS candidate. Good Lord, it’s like the entire Democratic Party establishment in Washington is on Trump’s payroll.In fifty years of watching politics I have never seen a political party invest more effort in its own destruction. And I say this despite the fact that I’ve been watching the Stupid Party earn its nickname pretty much ever since Reagan.
Redneck Peril 