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Democrats have only themselves to blame for their judicial predicament
By Marc A. Thiessen
Columnist
July 6
As President Trump prepares to announce his replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Democrats are desperate to block the president’s nominee — but are powerless to so. They have no one to blame but themselves. Let’s take a moment to recall the sordid 15-year history of Democratic miscalculations that brought them to this point.
The Democrats’ first mistake was to launch unprecedented filibusters against President George W. Bush’s appellate court nominees, starting with his 2001 nomination of Miguel Estrada for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit is considered the country’s second-most important court, having produced more Supreme Court justices than any other federal court. Estrada was a supremely qualified nominee who had the support of a clear majority in the Senate. His confirmation should have been easy.
But Democrats killed his nomination. Why? According to internal strategy memos obtained by the Wall Street Journal, they blocked Estrada at the request of liberal interest groups who said Estrada was “especially dangerous” because “he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” Democrats did not want Republicans to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. Instead, two years after his nomination, they made Estrada the first appeals court nominee in history to be successfully filibustered. It was an extraordinary breach of precedent.
During the process they put Miguel through, his wife had a miscarriage and later died from an alcohol and sleeping pill overdose.