Supreme partisanship

The Supreme Court is set to seat a ninth justice, the very accomplished and very conservative Neil Gorsuch — after Republicans’ decision to trigger confirmation via a bare-majority vote, long known as the “nuclear option.” It didn’t have to be this way. But in the end, the Republicans made the right choice. To leave a high court seat vacant rather than confirming a justice of Gorsuch’s caliber would have been irresponsible.

It is true that, by nixing the filibuster for Supreme Court seats, the GOP plunged the Senate into ever deeper partisan waters at a divided time. But the Democrats forced their hand.

We will not here repeat Gorsuch’s many qualifications; suffice to say that, though we disagree in many respects with his judicial philosophy, he is a solid choice for a Republican President.

Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch was guaranteed to provoke a Democratic backlash, given Republicans’ outrageous refusal last year to grant Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s choice to fill the very same vacancy, so much as a hearing. But that was then; this is now. Senate Democrats did not merely subject Gorsuch to tough questioning and oppose him in committee and floor votes.

They insisted upon using their position in the minority to filibuster — meaning, to deny the majority the opportunity, under the rules, to cast an up-or-down vote.

Their dishonest rationale is that 60 votes, the filibuster-proof threshold necessary for confirmation, is an accepted “standard” applied to Supreme Court nominees in the Senate.

Nonsense. Samuel Alito was confirmed by a 58 to 42 vote. Clarence Thomas, by a 52 to 48 vote. Gorsuch garnered 54 votes. It was Senate Democrats who, under thenleader Harry Reid, did away with the filibuster for executive branch appointments and lower court appointments.

Which is what makes it awfully hard to weep now that an insistence on filibustering a qualified nominee pushed the opposing party to extend a rule change they themselves pioneered.