Posted on 02/02/2017 7:50:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It didnt matter that Judge Neil Gorsuch was a highly respected jurist or that his stature as a leading conservative intellectual legal thinker made him a natural successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The growing number of Democrats who are determined to not so much oppose the Trump presidency as resist it wasted no time blasting Gorsuch as anti-woman and a tool of the corporate class. In doing so, the party base made it clear to Senate Democrats that nothing less than a battle to the death to stop his nomination would be considered acceptable. But in case there was any doubt about the duty of Democrats to oppose Gorsuch in spite of his impressive qualifications, it was removed by the graphic and accompanying article that the Times placed at the top of its home page almost as soon as President Trump announced the nomination.
Based on President-elect Trump and His Possible Justices, a study by Washington University in St. Louis, the Times chart analyzes Gorsuchs legal history as being to the right of every justice on the current court with the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas. Indeed, it asserted that he was more conservative in his opinions than Justice Scalia. The Times quoted the studys authors as predicting that Trumps nominee, if confirmed, would seek to limit gay rights, uphold restrictions on abortion and invalidate affirmative action programs. Those are fighting words for the Left and enough to ensure that even red-state Democrats up for reelection in 2018 should fear the reaction from their partys grassroots if they were inclined to oppose a filibuster, let alone vote to confirm Gorsuch.
But Times readers with long memories should recall a similar chart published last March after President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland for the same seat.
Obama and his reliable cheering section in the mainstream media touted Garland as a centrist pick rather than a doctrinaire liberal. That talking point served as an effective stick with which to beat the Republicans who refused to consider his nomination because of the unprecedented nature of the presidents demand that a Senate controlled by the opposition party should allow a president to alter the ideological balance of the court during an election year. But the claim that Garland was a centrist was debunked almost immediately by the same liberal flagship of the mainstream media that has labeled Gorsuch as being to the right of Scalia.
The chart published by the Times on March 16, 2016, demonstrated that Garland was to the left of two of the courts current liberals Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan and a virtual match for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leaving only Sonia Sotomayor slightly to the left of him. As the Times helpfully pointed out, Garlands presence on the high court would have helped shift the court to be more liberal. This painfully obvious observation was studiously ignored by the papers editorial column over the following months as it continued to argue that Obamas nominee was a neutral choice that Republicans should confirm.
That Garland was no moderate but, in fact, a doctrinaire liberal was not something the same newspaper chose to recall today as it sought to lead the charge against Gorsuch as an extremist. But theres more to this than just the usual liberal hypocrisy weve come to expect from the Times.
For one, the LeftRight analysis in the Washington University study is irrelevant to many of the cases that the Supreme Court adjudicates. Like the man whose seat he hopes to fill, Gorsuch is an originalist. This means that Gorsuch, much like Scalia, would be far more protective of the rights of defendants than Garland would have been. Those who seek to protect the Constitution as it was conceived and written are primarily concerned about protecting individual rights. Progressive statists such as Garland tend to be more interested in increasing the power of the government to infringe upon those rights in order to promote the political agenda of the Left.
Liberals have been quick to demonize Gorsuch for his rulings in favor of the Hobby Lobby Corporation and the Little Sisters of the Poor as they successfully fended off the Obamacare contraception mandate. But their belief in statism has led them to distort the significance of those cases. One neednt be opposed to contraception, let alone the rights of women, to understand that imposing the contraception mandate (which also covered abortifacients) on people of faith violated their right to religious freedom. But to liberals, even the First Amendments protection of free exercise of religion can and must be sacrificed to achieve their goals.
Those cases are a reminder that what is at stake in the battle to get the Supreme Court back to nine is more than a partisan vendetta. Claims that Gorsuchs seat was stolen from Obama or Garland are as absurd as they are telling. Obama had no inherent right to demand that a Republican Senate majority acquiesce in his desire to flip the court from a conservative majority to a liberal one. As the Times charts point out, the difference between Garland and Gorsuch is such that this is not merely a petty party grievance but a genuine conflict; how its resolved may well determine the future of religious liberty and other pressing issues of our day.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a veteran journalist and contributor to National Review Online.
So the Times editorial writers ignore reality? That's not news.
Interesting chart. If by “conservative”, they mean originalist, I find Thomas to be “just enough”. Yet there’s no one to the right of him yet.
They need to fix the chart... More Liberal should be More Activist
I heard from liberals that Judge Gorsuch:
Is in favor of dirty air and dirty water. Its not that he opposes liberal environmental views, he actually favors dirty air and dirty water.
Is in favor of all of us eating unsafe food.
Opposes any help for autistic children.
I’m sure he’s guilty of other crimes against humanity too which will come out when Schumer and his henchmen grill him at the confirmation hearings
Listen to the smartest man in the known Universe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C7Pc7ccysM
The left need do nothing here. No married man is going to favor dirty water and live through the experience. One might note that Gorsuch's wife wore a spotless white blouse for the announcement of his nomination.
That first chart is nonsense, there is no difference between any of the leftist judges. They all vote as a bloc on every single issue so degrees of political difference between them are irrelevant. The groupthink is strong with lefty judges.
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