Last night, in an East Room filled with Rethuglican politicians, and right wing operatives, neo-fascist fraudster and sexual predator Donald "Rump" Trump announced his Supreme Court nominee to be Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch. Rump fumbled through his introduction of Gorsuch, at one point identifying him as a Supreme Court justice, and awkwardly embraced the judge's wife planting a kiss on her cheek (how would any woman with self respect let that happen?). Gorsuch thanked President P*ssygrabber, who just last month settled a fraud lawsuit over his bogus Trump University and whose executive order detaining Muslim travelers is likely to be found un-Constitutional...for now.
Gorsuch is a clone of the late Antonin Scalia, whom he's modeled his judicial philosophy after, and an extreme conservative. He's opposed to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood, collective bargaining and union rights, gun safety measures, and protection of voting rights for minorities and the disenfranchised. At 49, he could impact Court rulings for another 35 years.
This is also about a stolen seat on the Supreme Court. Last year, when corrupt human/turtle hybrid Sen. Mitch "Missy" McConnell blocked even a hearing on Obama's nominee, Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, he denied a President (who had won in 2012 with a significant majority of the popular and electoral vote) the right to appoint Scalia's replacement. In doing so, he cynically provided a rallying point for every wingnut to get out and vote. As Scott Lemieux notes in his article in The New Republic,
"Gorsuch is a bad choice to fill a vacancy that should never have been Trump’s to fill in the first place. Democrats probably can’t prevent him from being on the Court, but they should make his nomination as difficult as possible. McConnell’s Supreme Court blockade played a significant role in Trump’s upset win, and Senate Democrats should act to help liberal voters adopt a similar focus on the Court in 2018 and 2020."Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer will often stick his finger in the wind to see which way it's blowing, and last night a huge crowd of demonstrators gathered outside his Brooklyn apartment building to tell him to block this and other Rump nominations. This should serve as notice to other Dems who might be weak in the knees that their careers are on the line, too, if they don't show some spine. For starters, they should follow Bob Schooley's suggestion:
And Dan Pfeiffer's:Every Democratic senator should just pin this photo to their lapel for the next few days of GOP whining. pic.twitter.com/6MayoFT8W5— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 31, 2017
The Democrats should treat Trump's SCOTUS pick with the exact same courtesy the GOP showed Merrick Garland. Don't flinch, don't back down— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) February 1, 2017
UPDATE: What Dave Leonhardt says --
... Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate. [snip]
... Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.
