Throughout its history, the United States Senate has experienced disgraceful filibusters (Strom Thurmond against the 1957 Civil Rights Act), entertaining filibusters (Huey Long in 1935 reciting a fried-oyster recipe) and symbolic filibusters (Rand Paul making a point about drone strikes in 2013). But the filibuster that Chuck Schumer is about to undertake against Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is perhaps the institution’s dumbest.
Hard to argue with that, but in the interest of progressive politics there is nothing so dumb that the Democrats won’t do it.
It won’t block Gorsuch, won’t establish any important jurisprudential principle, and won’t advance Democratic strategic goals — indeed the opposite. A Gorsuch filibuster would be an act of a sheer partisan pique against the wrong target, with the wrong method, at the wrong time.
I say go for it; if the so-called nuclear option eliminates the filibuster for Supreme Court Justices now Trump will be able to easily get his subsequent candidates for justices approved. And if it isn’t eliminated now the Democrats (who have already talked about using the nuclear option if Republicans filibustered a Supreme Court nomination from a prospective President Hillary Clinton) will implement it as soon as they are in power again anyway. So it looks like a win-win to me. Go for it Chuck E!
There’s a lot of downside for the Dems so maybe Chucky won’t actually follow through with his threat. Then again, they are a petulant lot -
so it’s hard to say for sure. The good news is that either way, Trump wins.
Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!
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