I thought about Cruz, and I think he’d vote the “right” way as a Justice. And he’s only 46. My concerns are:
1. Inasmuch as Cruz has pissed off so many of even the GOP Senators, how sure can we be that at least a few of them won’t wander off to reject him?
2. I don’t think — just my gut here — that he’d be good at persuading fellow Justices in close cases.
First, Cruz isn’t on the list, and IMHO there is no reason to deviate from it. Picking from the list checks a box, and it puts the Democrat senators from purple states in a bind. Out of the 25 (half!) of the Democrat caucus in the Senate whose terms expire in 2019, ten of them are from states Trump won. Which is to say, from states whose voters voted for that list when they voted for POTUS last November.Otherwise, I would think that the Republican Senate caucus would like to see Cruz leave the Senate, and naming him to SCOTUS would constitute “kicking him upstairs” - and obviating the need to contend with him in the Senate.
Democrats have, by “filibustering” Justice Gorsuch (heh, heh!) made themselves irrelevant as a consideration in selecting any future nominee when they do not have a majority (and we already know that they would make the Republicans irrelevant when next they have a Senate majority). Consequently there was nothing for the Republicans to lose by disallowing a filibuster. And that clarifies the situation if Trump does get other picks. In the best case, two more vacancies occur before 2019 - and Trump fills them with Scalia clones. The Democrats will have nothing to say that they have not already forced the Republicans to make irrelevant.