Naturally this has sent leftists into hysterics due to the fact President Donald Trump will have the opportunity to select a SCOTUS nominee for the second time in about a year-and-a-half. You can tell the Dems are in panic mode when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a lackluster case about how Republicans would be hypocrites if they hold a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. He's of course referring to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell choosing not to replace Justice Antonin Scalia upon his death in early 2016. McConnell's rationale was the American people should take into consideration the SCOTUS vacancy when voting for President later that year. So obviously Schumer's being disingenuous since he knows full well that McConnell meant no new justices in a presidential election year.
As my radio show's political wonk Matt Mackowiak pointed out, Schumer has no one to blame but himself for the precarious position the Dems find themselves in.
Chuck Schumer made a terrible miscalculation in filibustering a qualified, bulletproof nominee like Neil Gorsuch when he was not changing the balance of the court. Now that the swing vote is up, a simple majority will decide the Kennedy seat. Dems have no options.— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) June 27, 2018
Nearly 17 months ago, my friend and former Northern Alliance Radio Network colleague Ed Morrissey absolutely nailed it when questioning the Dems' strategy to filibuster Gorsuch's appointment to the Supreme Court. Said filibuster led to the GOP invoking the "nuclear option," which meant only a simple majority would be needed to end debate.
The most puzzling part of this was the missed opportunity to leverage the traditionalism of several Republicans in the Senate. Clearly a few of their colleagues across the aisle did not want to do go nuclear; John McCain grumbled about it to the bitter end. Why not give Gorsuch a floor vote and wait for a more provocative nominee on the next opening? Yes, Democrats and progressives insist that McConnell would have gone nuclear then too, but the success of that would depend on the nominee. McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski wouldn’t have signed up to change the rules for William Pryor, for instance, and that left Democrats some leverage against Trump to force him into at least some hesitancy in selecting more activist conservatives to the court.
Now, however, Trump has carte blanche on his next opening. Democrats have no leverage at all, having squandered it on a nominee that doesn’t impact the philosophical balance of the court at all. On top of that, their hysterics over Gorsuch have eroded their credibility entirely.
I believe the phrase "hoist of their own petard" is perfectly apropos here. Take a bow, Dems.
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