Conservatives hope for momentum

Supreme Court Justice designate Neil Gorsuch will return to the White House on Monday for a swearingin ceremony in the Rose Garden that President Donald Trump and his allies hope will resonate well beyond the judge’s ugly confirmation battle.

The event marks a big win for Mr. Trump and conservatives — both on and off Capitol Hill — who have been viewed as struggling desperately to produce significant victories despite pledges of sweeping change in Washington that oneparty rule would bring.

Since he was inaugurated 80 days ago, Mr. Trump has failed to advance much of the ambitious legislative agenda he said would happen quickly if he was elected — rolling back the Affordable Care Act, rewriting the tax code and injecting big spending into the country’s infrastructure.

But the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch on Friday — despite the change to Senate rules that preceded it — broke this pattern, at least in a singular instance. Trump allies in the conservative movement, and in Congress, hope that it will serve as a springboard for other triumphs and something of a reboot of his presidency.

Judge Gorsuch is joining the Supreme Court just in time to cast potentially significant votes in cases that pit religious liberty against gay rights, test limits on funding for church schools and challenge California’s restrictions on carrying a concealed gun in public.

“I think it’s a big shot in the arm,” Trump ally Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said of Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. “It gives Republicans a taste of victory and reminds them we can have many more.”

Judge Gorsuch is seen in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and conservatives celebrated that Judge Gorsuch would maintain the high court’s ideological balance, pouring millions of dollars into advertising benefiting him.

“Hopefully, we’ve learned some lessons from the health care challenge,” said veteran GOP operative Ed Rollins, the senior strategist for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. “We weren’t in that one as much as we were in this one,” he added, referring to the Gorsuch fight.

At the same time, however, even some Republicans on Capitol Hill question whether a nomination muscled through the Senate through an extraordinary rules change has much meaning for more difficult battles ahead.