Replies

The only one I remember FReepers having any qualms about at all was Kavanaugh (and even in his case, I would say 80-85% of FReepers were totally on board with Kav). Gorsuch and ACB’s nominations received nearly blind, adoring praise on here. Only about 5% of us had any reservations.

Bush never got a pass like that. As I said before, if Harriet Miers had simply been nominated by Trump instead of Bush, she’d be Justice Harriet Miers because FReepers would have blindly accepted the narrative from the White House that she was a hardcore “originalist” and a rock-ribbed reliable constitionalist.

So rather than blame Mitch McConnell, the reality is that AlwaysTrumpers are their own worst enemy. THEY are the reason we’re stuck with Trump’s mediocre justices for decades.

IMO I still think I nailed it in predicting Gorsuch would be a major downgrade from Scalia and end up as a Sandra Day O’Connor type judge. She was originally touted as a female version of Rehnquist (they had even dated in law school!) and Reaganites prematurely declared victory when she voted more like Rehnquist than any other justice during her first 3 years on the bench. Overall, O’Connor voted the “right way” about 80% of the time, but had a weird liberal streak on some social issues.

The only weird quark I may have gotten wrong is that there’s a possibility at this point that Gorsuch may end up the “most conservative” of Trump’s three crappy picks. I always assumed the opposite... I thought Gorsuch would be a rotten moderate swing justice, Kav would be slightly “more conservative” and vote to Gorsuch’s right, and ACB would be “more conservative” than Kav and the only one of the three to vote to overturn stuff like Roe (though she still wouldn’t have gotten anywhere NEAR my “short list” because of other problems).

But that’s more of a condemnation of ACB being Meh so far, and Kav being more Anthony Kennedy-like every passing day, than Gorsuch being remotely “Scalia like”