Republicans want and have found a reliably extreme right-wing justice. He is an adherent of and propagandist for the judicial supremacist ideology, which pretends, as a cardinal premise, that judges are not political but rather have some special, exclusive and highly selective powers of discernment of "original" constitutional intent that empowers them to make profoundly consequential political decisions contrary to the will of the overwhelming majority.
Republicans, as have oligarchs throughout American history, correctly consider this judicial supremacist ideology essential for maintaining the 1% plutocracy which they serve. Plutocrats therefore generously fund organizations to find and certify political judges like Gorsuch. The purpose of these organizations is to avoid any more Souters or Stevens, who were conservative Republican justices who upheld the Constitution.
The plutocrat-funded organizations lobbied for Gorsuch after spending millions and lobbying just as forcefully against Garland who had even better establishment "qualifications" than Gorsuch. (For example, unlike Gorsuch, both Obama and Garland were members of the prestigious Harvard Law Review in law school.) An "expert" for one of those organizations stated the new confirmation standard: "If you truly believe that a particular nominee would wreak havoc on America, why not do everything you can to stop him?" "Wreak havoc" for such a lobbyist means "overturn the plutocracy" and put their lobbyists out of work. Republicans worried about "donor backlash" if they voted against the plutocrats who bribe. Therefore they blocked the merely conservative Garland in favor of their more reliably plutocratic Federalist Society nominee which the plutocracy supports.
The new political standard for denying a president's choice does not require any Supreme Court nominee to even be considered who does not meet the Senate's political test. The decision by Democrats to block a nominee is therefore not a reflection on the personality or elite credentials or other "qualifications" of the nominee, since Garland's were beyond any doubt at least as exemplary as are Gorsuch's. The decision focuses solely on the politics of the nominee, particularly on the essential issue of the country's failing democracy and its dysfunctionally ruling plutocracy.
This rule change cannot be put back in the bottle by idle wishful thinking that "the U.S. Supreme Court should be above politics." Ignoring politics during the confirmation process cannot put the Supreme Court "above politics." In an era when Congress allows the Court to exercise powers of judicial supremacy so it can mandate corrupt plutocratic rule, one has to be blind to avoid recognizing that the Court is already mired deep in the muck of such politics.
Although Trump is unpopular by any historical standards, liberal Senators like King, Coons or Leahy had been nervously reluctant to block his nominee by applying the very same new political standard to Gorsuch that Republicans applied to Obama's nominee for the seat, Garland. As Politico wrote "despite anger from the Democratic base that senators have cowered from a fight against Trump's high-court pick, the sole strategic decision the Democratic Caucus has made about Gorsuch ahead of his confirmation hearings [was] to make no decision at all."
Predictably, the plutocratic wing of the Democratic party produced supporting propaganda for any failure to embrace a filibuster strategy as a party, i.e. effectively, based on the new political standard. For example the Bezos Post published an article worrying about "judicial independence" and warning about the "danger of a politicized judiciary" if the Democrats should adopt the new standard by doing everything they can to stop Gorsuch under existing Senate rules for political reasons. This Post approach would ignore not only that the new standard represents an honest acknowledgment of the reality that the Supreme Court is already fully politicized but also that the politicized Court is fully weaponized by its judicial supremacy ideology ("judicial independence") for unrestrained class warfare on behalf of plutocrats.
Ignoring the plutocratic politics of a Gorsuch at the time of confirmation in favor of considering his elitist "qualifications" as the solely dispositive factor will only make the plutocratic supremacist faction on the Court even more brazenly political. The Senate cannot "check and balance" the current illegitimately politicized Supreme Court by simply ignoring that fact.
Nevertheless the usual party operatives argue d, along with Republicans, that Democrats should apply the old deferential standard rather than the new political standard. Because they opposed the new standard, the argument goes, Democrats should therefore defer to Trump's nominee under the old standard, which recognized the presidential role of speaking for a majority. As shown above, Trump does not now and never has spoken for a majority of Americans. But even if he did, arguing that Democrats should follow the old rule is like arguing that Democrats who oppose Republican tax reductions should, pay their own taxes at the old higher rate because they opposed enactment of the Republicans' reductions.
Any Democrats or their apologists who pretend that the old deferential rule is still operative simply do not want to acknowledge that their vote on a Supreme Court nominee is inherently a political vote in this plutocratic era. To do so would strip them of one excuse for giving their usual decisive support to the plutocracy that they actually serve behind their window-dressing of liberal principle or Senate tradition. By way of such defective reasoning, the Party's betrayal, which started with Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly and Bennet, could conceivably have spread to just enough more of their party necessary to put Gorsuch on the Court by enabling cloture.
These defectors and their apologists will argue they are making a responsible and principled non-partisan vote about character and credentials to be a justice, as well as preserving the traditional filibuster rule. For example Donnelly explained that he thinks "[Gorsuch] is a qualified jurist" while Heitkamp claimed to be "very worried about our polarized politics and what the future will bring, since I'm certain we will have a Senate rule change that will usher in more extreme judges in the future."
In the current corrupt Kabuki politics, check your wallet when any politician pretends to be non-partisan and principled. It is Republican Senators and Democrats like Donnelly and Heitkamp, all well-disciplined by money politics, not the rule change, that will "usher in more extreme judges," just as they have for two generations. Democrats failed to filibuster Alito who was just as obviously a far right ideologue as Gorsuch. In her shell-game reasoning Heitkamp contends that by voting to confirm an extreme justice this week she is somehow stopping future extreme judges. It did not work out that way with Alito when Democrats defeated his filibuster.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
