Fields: Senator Bennet (D-CO) Should Support Gorsuch; McConnell: Gorsuch Will be Confirmed – How is Up to Dems
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- In an op-ed for the Colorado Springs Gazette, Michael Fields of Americans for Prosperity urges U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) to support President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Michael Fields: Senator Bennet Should Support Gorsuch
“In nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Trump chose a fourth-generation Coloradan to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Scalia’s passing last year. Yet even after the two met last week, Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has still not declared his support for Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. The question every Coloradan should be asking is, ‘Why?’ It shouldn’t be a hard decision. As a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gorsuch has written legal opinions that are consistently brilliant, clearly written, and grounded firmly in the Constitution. He demonstrates all the qualities that we want in a Supreme Court justice. . . If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would be only the second Coloradan to serve on the Supreme Court (the first, Byron White, once employed him as a clerk). He would bring to the Court a personal understanding of the issues that affect Coloradans. The current Supreme Court justices, most of whom have spent their lives in big East Coast cities like New York and Boston, could benefit from his Western perspective. . . Judge Gorsuch deserves the support of Sen. Bennet and anyone who cares deeply about the rule of law. At the very least, a nominee of his caliber deserves a fair hearing and a vote.”
- Guy Benson reports that yet another Democrat is breaking from party leadership over Judge Gorsuch.
Townhall.com: Senator Durbin Seems Willing to Give Gorsuch Up-or-Down Vote
“[W]hen Dick Durbin from deep blue Illinois is making statements like these, the likelihood that a unified blockade is in the works is quite slim: ‘. . . “The base wants me to reject him out of hand,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the body’s No. 2 Democrat, who will meet with Judge Gorsuch on Tuesday. “I don’t think that serves the country well.”’. . . Elsewhere, while people like New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen keep flipping and flopping all over the place in terms of where they stand on this confirmation process, Montana’s Jon Tester is promising to give Gorsuch a ‘fair shake[.]’ . . . Given this mounting evidence and his productive goodwill tour on Capitol Hill, it’s hard to imagine Gorsuch not getting confirmed[.]”
- In Quartz Ideas, law professor Nathan Chapman argues that Democrats can trust Gorsuch to stand up to executive overreach.
“Senate Democrats are gearing up to oppose Gorsuch’s nomination on principle. Forget his impeccable background; as a Republican appointee, they fear, he will simply look for opportunities to advance his political ideology rather than the law. If there is one cliché in legal academic circles it is that judges exercise near-absolute discretion to implement their policy preferences, especially in constitutional cases. But they are still one of America’s best defenses against executive overreach. Indeed, now more than ever, Americans need to trust the federal judiciary, including Judge Gorsuch, to stand up for the Constitution. The vast majority of judges—regardless of their political party—have spent their entire adult lives preparing to do so. . . None of this means that judges will agree about what the Constitution requires. Judges reasonably disagree all the time. Sometimes—especially in difficult constitutional cases—their disagreement aligns with the party of the president who nominated them. But when they disagree they do so as members of a profession that broadly agrees on certain liberal norms: the rule of law, the separation of powers, the value of the adversarial trial, and an independent judiciary. . . Will they disagree about some of the outcomes of constitutional litigation against president Trump? Undoubtedly. But Democrats and Republicans alike should trust that none of them—including Trump appointees like Gorsuch—will roll over, be cowed by tweets, or decline to exercise what chief justice John Marshall described long ago as their duty to ‘say what the law is.’”
- In an interview with Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is certain that Judge Gorsuch will receive the votes necessary to sit on the Supreme Court.
“Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed to the Supreme Court even if Democrats do not provide the eight votes needed to break a filibuster, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday in an interview that seemed to hint at a possible change to Senate rules to approve President Trump’s nominee over Democratic objections. . . McConnell said he would ‘not play out how this ends,’ other than to pledge that Gorsuch would end up on the high court. ‘There are a number of ways to get in,’ he added. But McConnell declined to say what other options he might use to confirm Gorsuch other than the so-called nuclear option, which requires changing the Senate rules to lower the number of votes required to approve a Supreme Court Justice from 60 to 51. Alternatively, Democrats, particularly those up for re-election in 2018, may yet help provide the eight votes needed to reach 60 votes. McConnell called Gorsuch ‘a stunningly successful individual. . . We are going to get Judge Gorsuch confirmed,’ he said. ‘How that happens is up to the Democrats.’”
