Gorsuch nomination likely to be confirmed, but at what cost to U.S.?

I have no doubt that the U.S. Senate will wind up confirming the appointment by President Donald J. Trump of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States.
 

The image Dems want Gorsuch to be tainted with

Trump will get a political victory – and a BIG one! Influence over the direction the Supreme Court takes on legal issues for years to come; way much longer than the time during which Trump will actually serve as president.

MEANING I HAVEN’T concerned myself much with the tactics being used by the Democratic Party minority of the Senate to try to thwart a vacancy on the nation’s high court from being filled. It’s going to happen, no matter how much senators (including Illinois’ own Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth) oppose it.

There has been speculation that the Senate’s Republican leadership is prepared to use some hardball procedural tactics that could basically force the issue to be addressed – regardless of the opposition from Democrats.

But those people who think they’re being practical-minded by merely looking at the end result (Gorsuch assuming the position, so to speak, on the high court) are missing the point.

For the purpose of the opposition tactics, quite frankly, is to muck up the reputation of Gorsuch based on the circumstances to which he gained a position on the court. Make it so that any future actions he takes get tied in so intensely to the legacy of Donald Trump.

Some of this is payback for Garland rejection

MAKE IT SO that Gorsuch becomes nothing but a female dog to The Donald.

Which isn’t a nice or honorable way for Democrats to behave. I have no doubt it carries its share of a taint of sleaze.

But as Democrats, including Durbin, have made a point of stating, Gorsuch only got to have the appointment because of the partisan political games that were played last year by the Senate in refusing for nearly a year to consider the Supreme Court appointment of Merrick Garland.

He was the D.C.-based federal judge who then-President Barack Obama would have named to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Durbin among those spewing partisan rhetoric

BUT REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGUES already were repulsed that Obama had been able to name two justices to the Supreme Court (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) and weren’t about to give him a third person.

The high court, after all, only has nine justices. Republican ideologues want to erase what they see as the taint Obama put on the federal government. Having a court with one-third of its picks chosen by Barack was totally unacceptable.

So Garland, a moderate pick from suburban Lincolnwood who was Obama’s attempt to appease more conservative interests, wound up becoming nothing. Gorsuch’s treatment, to a degree, is partisan political payback.

Duckworth efforts to meet Gorsuch ignored

But by making it clear that Gorsuch is a product of the Age of Trump (no matter what he really believes), they hope his name will be the subject of sneers and snickers similar to the way many in our society view Justice Clarence Thomas.

MORE THAN A quarter of a century after the confirmation hearings that resulted in the public airing of sexual harassment allegations, there are those who will never take anything he does seriously. Particularly because of the perception that Thomas was a pick of then-President George H.W. Bush who wanted a “certain kind” of black person on the high court who wouldn’t be as feisty as the legendary Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Time will tell if a “Justice Gorsuch” winds up being someone who can look beyond political partisanship while interpreting the law, or if he becomes so tied into the Trump image that we can never fully look at him seriously, or objectively.

GINSBURG: Now THAT will be a battle!

If anything, the real political battles will come if/when Trump gets to make Supreme Court appointments that would replace the justices perceived as not hostile toward progressive causes and issues.

Just think of how ugly the fight will be if Trump gets a chance to pick a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who just turned 84 a few weeks ago). That will make the current brawl seem like a silly little spat, by comparison.

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EXTRA: Can Trump truly govern? Or good for nothing but barking orders!

It will be interesting to see how President Donald J. Trump handles the naming of his pick to fill a nearly year-old vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States; a move he has said could come on Tuesday.
 

GARLAND: Never get to see him on high court

Not only will it mean the end of Merrick Garland  (a Chicago-born and suburban Lincolnwood native) as a possibility for the nation’s high court, it will finally put us in a position where we can see if the new president is actually capable of working with government to get things done.

FOR ALL WE’VE seen him do thus far is issue multitudes of executive orders, many of which the Washington Post reports are not really executive orders – but presidential memorandums.

As in Donald J. makes grand pronouncements on various issues, mostly to express attitudes desired by the nativist-leaning ideologues who actually voted for him to be president.

Or also to make statements meant to repudiate whatever had happened during the past eight years. In short, we have seen nothing more than “President You’re Fired!” bellowing like a buffoon. The encouraging part of all this is that nothing has occurred that can’t easily be undone when the day comes that we get a real-live grownup working in the Oval Office.

In fact, it has become the reality of the U.S. presidency that whenever the post changes to someone of an opposition political party, executive orders are issued to undo many of the general principles espoused by the previous administration.

SUCH AS THE “Mexico City Policy” by which Republican administrations have told federal agencies not to do anything that would encourage abortion in foreign nations. Democratic presidents, including Barack Obama, always did away with the policy.

But all this is a matter of making pronouncements, being president at the moments when you speak and people are supposed to just listen. Actually offering their own opinions, or taking actions intended to refute you, hasn’t been a part of Trump’s presidential experience.

Not yet!

 

TRUMP: Will we ever see him govern?

We’ll see in evaluating his pick for the high court just how much of a legal mind he wants. Or is he looking for someone who will forevermore think of his allegiance to Trump himself. Is Trump capable of making an independent pick, then getting it through the political mechanizations of Congress?

ALTHOUGH FOR THAT matter, it could wind up being a pick that was made by the Republican establishment that spent the bulk of 2016 ensuring that Barack Obama did not actually get to pick three individuals (out of nine total) to the Supreme Court. Because it was bad enough, in their minds, that he got two picks and was able to undermine (with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) the vision they have of an all-white, male establishment.

Is Trump merely the errand boy the ideologue establishment of Congress plans to use to ram through their own agenda for our society – allowing Donald J’s ego to be bloated even moreso because it will serve their purposes? And take the blame when their ideals are found to be offensive by the true majority of people in our society! Is Trump so eager to be "president" that he's willing to be besmirched by the conservative ideologues amongst us?

Would Trump be willing to speak out if the GOP agenda doesn’t strictly match his own? Would that become the potential breaking point that could make the next four years even goofier than the current conservative mess we have now? Is political civil war what we're in for, the "right" versus the "alt-right," with rational people sitting on the sidelines and trying not to get caught in the crossfire?

Trump about to leave his imprint on this particular hallowed hall.  Will he soil it? Photograph provided by Supreme Court of the United States

Tylenol; as in we’ll all going to be using massive doses for the national headache our society will develop from observing all the nonsense done in coming months and years in the name of partisan politics.

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Merrick Garland; our 'hometown' boy who's likely to become nothing

So what is destined to be the legacy of Merrick Garland – the appeals court judge for the District of Columbia whom President Barack Obama has proposed to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States?

GARLAND: What will he become?

There has been a lot of rhetoric spouted about the suburban Lincolnwood native who went on to bigger and better things once leaving the Chicago area.

MANY OF OUR political people have been eager to attach themselves to his name. Both of our state’s senators have publicly said Garland is qualified to be on the nation’s high court.

That even includes Mark Kirk, our state’s Republican senator whose own party leaders are the ones heading up the effort to ensure that Garland never even gets a hearing – let alone a vote – from the Senate with regards to his confirmation.

Even Obama got into the act – on Thursday, he appeared at the University of Chicago law school (where he once worked as an instructor while also serving in the Illinois state Senate) to tout the merits of Garland.

As though he thinks he can shame the leadership of Republicans desperately opposed to the idea of letting this particular president have any more authority than they’re willing to grant him.

WHICH IS MY long-winded way of stating that they have no shame. They’re more than stubborn enough to follow through with their threat to refuse to even hold confirmation proceedings for Garland.

Probably because they know that if legitimate hearings were held, Garland likely would come across as judicial enough to impress the American public. The GOP’s blatantly-partisan maneuvers would be exposed for what they are – a tacky tactic meant to impose their own vision (rather than anything desired by the public) on our society.

OBAMA: Touting Garland in Chicago

So what really becomes of Garland? What is the point of him enduring the upcoming 2016 and all the non-activity that will happen if, in the end, he’s not going to actually get the post?

Is Garland deluded enough to think that the partisanship of the Republican caucuses in Congress can be cracked? Or does he merely like the idea of the label of “Supreme Court nominee” attached to his name?

I’D THINK AT the very least it becomes a little easier for him to get a quality reservation these days at a restaurant within the District of Columbia.

Because in future years, it’s always possible that people will struggle to remember the name of “that guy” whom Obama tried to put on the Supreme Court. Or, as I’m sure the Republican ideologues perceive it, had the arrogance to think he had any right to nominate.

KIRK: Garland makes him less likely to lose?

Who does this president think he is, thinking he can fill three of nine vacancies on the Supreme Court – just because all of them happened to occur during his presidency?

I’ve heard from some people who openly admit this fight is about ideology – the Supreme Court must be dominated by people who have a conservative bent to the way they perceive the law.

OTHERS HAVE BROUGHT up the name of Robert Bork – the former Nixon administration aide and appeals court judge whom then-President Ronald Reagan tried to nominate to the Supreme Court in 1987, only to be rejected because his own ideological leanings were so far to the right. They claim that GOP treatment of Garland is merely payback for what Democrats did to Bork.

BORK: Got his hearing. Why not Garland?

Which is nonsense.

Bork got hearings. He got the chance to state his case – which is something that Garland will never get from the current Congressional leadership. And only the hardest-core of ideologues remembers Bork -- the man who carried out Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" of 1973 -- in any sort of sympathetic context.

It’s creating a situation in which the name “Garland” will not be the lingering memory come future years. It will be the Republican leadership whose inactivity on this appointment will be among several facts that will create the “shame” they will have to live down when their legacies are written.

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What is gained by Obama going ahead to make Supreme Court appointment?

President Barack Obama on Wednesday rubbed it in the face of the Republican opposition that has spent the past seven years trying to undermine him. He's also hoping his actions play well politically to the point that his Democratic allies wind up benefitting.

GARLAND: He can have Supreme Court dreams

About the one thing that isn’t at stake is the chance that Merrick Garland – currently the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia – will become a Supreme Court justice any time soon.

ON THE DAY after Election Day in his home state of Illinois and four other places – ones in which Hillary Clinton did well and Democratic Party renegade Bernie Sanders saw his chances slip (although he insists he’s not even dreaming of leaving the race) – Obama made it known he has made a pick to fill the vacancy caused by the death last month of Antonin Scalia.

Although there was some speculation that Obama could name the first Indian-American to serve on the high court and also at one point considered a justice from the appeals court for San Francisco (considered the most liberal in the nation), in the end Obama picked Garland.

Considering the Obama presidency previously gave us two women (one of Puerto Rican ethnic origins) as its Supreme Court picks, it would seem that the choice of Garland was meant to be safe.

Except that when it comes to this issue, nothing is “safe.”

OBAMA: Calling GOP's bluff

FOR THE REPUBLICAN majority that controls the U.S. Senate that will have to confirm any choice the president makes has already made it known it does not want Obama to have the pick.

They are content to let the court operate one short for just over the next year so that the next president (whom they fantasize will be a Republican) makes the pick.

It’s not just that they don’t want Obama to have this one pick – they don’t want him going into the history books as having been the guy who got to pick one-third of the Supreme Court of the United States.

They don’t want him doing what their alleged idol, Ronald Reagan, did, which was to stack the Supreme Court and other federal courts with judges who had an ideological sense of what the law was all about. Those picks have lived on much longer than he did.

REAGAN: Not ready for Ronnie's legacy to die

IT MUST BE a real smack in the face if Obama (the man they ideologically and racially detest) gets to be the guy who undoes what Reagan did.

Which is the part that gets to me. Some Republican types openly admit their desire is to keep the Supreme Court from going “liberal.” Either because that’s just their leaning, or because they really think it was ordained by God himself that the nation’s high court be biased in their favor.

My sense is that the choice of Garland is meant to provide the Republican leadership with a white male lacking in liberal leanings (albeit one who’s Jewish) for whom the easy thing to do would be for the GOP to accept his appointment.

This way, if they do wind up turning him down – or better yet, not even consider him – it can all be blamed on political partisanship.

THERE ALREADY HAS been political trash talk advising Democrats of the need to vote because we don’t want Donald Trump or Ted Cruz making a Supreme Court appointment. That rhetoric will be stepped up so high, and will be used by every Democrat seeking political office.

CLINTON: Will Hillary make the REAL pick?

While some people will probably vote Republican just because of that, Obama is gambling that the voice of real people in this country will be so outraged that he ultimately wins.

And that a future “President Hillary Clinton” will wind up getting to make the appointment of the real replacement for Scalia.

Although it’s kind of a shame that Garland is not likely to gain the position – although Harvard-educated, he is Chicago-born and raised in suburban Lincolnwood; the perfect end to the legacy of the first Chicago resident of significance to rise to the ranks of U.S. president.

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