Democrats’ Illegitimate Gorsuch Rage

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced on Friday that she’ll back Chuck Schumer’s plan to launch a filibuster against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch has exemplary credentials, a Boy-Scout-esque record of personal conduct, and he sailed through his confirmation hearings unscathed, leaving Democrats with zero legitimate reasons to keep him off the court. But instead of raising the white flag of bipartisanship, they’ve decided to embrace an illegitimate reason to use the last iota of power voters left to them to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination.

Their filibuster is built on the argument the Supreme Court seat Gorsuch would fill was “stolen.”

If the seat was stolen, why weren’t voters mad? Why didn’t they punish the thieves by voting them out of office?

Stolen. That’s the word reflecting off the walls of the left-wing echo chamber this week. That’s the mainstream media consensus —the seat was “stolen” from President Barack Obama and Judge Merrick Garland by Republicans. Thieved by those GOP buccaneers! The New York Times editorial board called it “stolen.” So did Time magazine, the L.A. Times, U.S. News and World Report, and MSNBC. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Jeff Merkely (D-Ore.) also agree the seat was “stolen.”

Either these media outlets and senators are ignorant of the Constitution, or they are lying to push their agenda. Either way, the seat was not “stolen.” The idea they’re peddling is basically that Mitch McConnell watched Ocean’s Eleven one too many times, assembled a crack team of ne’er-do-well GOP senators, broke into Obama’s ultra-secure vault 20 stories below the White House, and stole Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat. But let’s be real: Mitch McConnell is no George Clooney, and he didn’t steal anything.

The Liberal anger that has erupted over the nomination of Judge Gorsuch is not anger at an act of theft; it’s anger at the U.S. Constitution and its checks and balances. The Constitution is unambiguous about this check of the legislative branch over the executive branch:

“He [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges of the Supreme Court.”

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What happened? Obama got checked, and Liberals can’t handle it.

Why did it happen? Because elections have consequences.

President Obama’s agenda was a job-killing, economy-wrecking, let’s-do-everything-that-ruined-Europe nightmare from the moment he took office in 2009. As a result, by 2015 Democrats had lost 68 seats in the House and 14 seats in the Senate or roughly a quarter of their seats in each House of Congress.

Democrats spent eight years losing the support of American voters, yet they continued to operate under the delusion that the American people were clamoring for more leftism. In reality, American voters were fed up with it. President Obama infamously relied on the “stupidity of the American voter” when he peddled the famous “keep your plan, keep your doctor” lie to pass Obamacare, according to the bill’s chief architect. He tore off a chunk of Article One and ran away with it when he overreached on executive orders. He stiff-armed the Senate when he unilaterally entered into a deal with Iran. And he made a direct promise to infringe on the enumerated powers of Congress when he said he’d use his pen and phone to push his agenda through.

In short, Obama’s entire presidency was about sailing Dukes-of-Hazzard-style over Constitutional checks and balances while voters kept sending more Roscoe P. Coltrane Republicans to stop him.

Finally, it caught up with him. The Republicans were able to use their Constitutional power to check the out-of-control executive branch. It wasn’t theft. It was simply the fact that — as Obama himself once said — ‘elections have consequences.” In this case, the Senate elections had the consequence that President Obama didn’t get Senate consent to appoint another Supreme Court justice in the last year of his presidency.

Republicans achieved, through Constitutional methods, what voters sent them to Washington to achieve.

If the seat was stolen, why weren’t voters mad? Why didn’t they punish the thieves by voting them out of office?

Are we to believe that after Senate Republicans “stole” a Supreme Court seat from Obama and Garland, Americans were so outraged that they not only voted to allow the GOP to stay in control of the Senate, but also voted for the GOP to stay in control of the House, and they gave the GOP control of the executive branch and by extension the Supreme Court?

Now, Democrats would love to use Constitutional checks and balances to keep Gorsuch off the Supreme Court, but they can’t because voters stripped them of so much Constitutional power.

So, instead of acknowledging their left-wing agenda is unpopular, they’ve decided to be outraged at the Constitution’s checks and balances — just as they were outraged at the Electoral College after the election.

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Here’s where it really gets ridiculous: At the same time Democrats are venting this outrage at the Constitution, they are, paradoxically, treating the Senate cloture rule as sacrosanct. That’s right! Exercising a constitutional power is theft, but we must all genuflect to a Senate rule that has been the guiding light of our nation since 1974. Do Democrats think the average American voter doesn’t care that much about the Constitution but is a purist when it comes to Senate rules?

Harry Reid didn’t seem to think so when he used the so-called nuclear option to ram through Obama nominees for political positions in the government.

The original copy of Senate Rule XXII isn’t on display at the National Archives Museum protected by armed guards and ten feet of bulletproof glass. There’s a reason for that.

If McConnell uses the nuclear option, D.C. swamp monsters might have nightmares that the minority party in the Senate no longer wields the power of an eternal filibuster. But the average American will sleep just fine.

Eddie Zipperer is an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College and a regular LifeZette contributor.