Dems in bind over Trump court pick
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 02/01/17 08:36 PM EST 6,212
Senate Republicans voiced confidence Wednesday that they will have the votes to confirm President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, as Democrats appeared divided over how to handle the pick.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) in a floor speech indicated that he has serious concerns about Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
But Schumer stopped short of promising a filibuster against Gorsuch, saying instead that Trump’s nominee should meet a 60-vote threshold to get on the court.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), who began the week promising a filibuster against any nominee from Trump, was on Wednesday the only Democratic senator explicitly voicing support for using procedural tools to stop Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with a sterling academic and legal resume.
A handful of other Democrats, including Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), say they will oppose him. But no other Democrats have so far used Merkley’s language.
It’s possible that will change, but Democratic senators on Wednesday appeared to be in no hurry to make promises.
Other Democrats say they are keeping an open mind on Gorsuch, even liberals such as Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who said he would support a hearing and vote on his nomination.
Ten Democrats representing states won by Trump last year are up for reelection in 2018 and will come under certain attack from Republicans for blocking Gorsuch on procedural grounds. Trump carried five of those states by double digits.
Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), one of the red-state Democrats up for reelection, told reporters before meeting with Gorsuch that he is looking for a jurist “that follows the law,” following up on his pledge from the day before not to filibuster “for the sake of filibustering.”
Many Democrats are still sore over the way Republicans treated Merrick Garland, whom former President Obama nominated to fill Scalia’s seat in early 2016. Republicans never gave Garland a hearing or a vote.
At the same time, the party seems skeptical of pulling out every tool to block Gorsuch, despite the urging of many outside liberal groups.
Republicans across the board have praised Gorsuch’s record, and his home-state senator, Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), predicted Wednesday that the entire GOP conference would back him.
“I think he’s going to have a tremendous amount of support from Democrats as well,” he said after meeting with the nominee.
Gardner was quick to point out the political stakes for red-state Democrats.
“If your state voted for Donald Trump and you’re obstructing Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, there’s going to be a penalty to be paid,” said Gardner, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which will be targeting vulnerable Democrats next year.
Vice President Pence accompanied Gorsuch to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office for his first meeting of the day. Gorsuch also sat down with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley(R-Iowa) and Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas).
Grassley says he plans on holding confirmation hearings in six weeks, a timeline that Democrats are not pushing back on yet.
A senior Democratic aide said Democrats would object to Grassley’s timeline if Gorsuch were slow in turning over documentation for review, as some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees have been.
While partisanship in the Senate has become increasingly bitter in recent years, filibusters of Supreme Court nominees are rare.
Senate leaders have moved only four times to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominations — in 1968, 1971, 1986 and 2006, according to a Congressional Research Service report from October 2015.
There’s debate on whether those few examples qualify as judicial filibusters. Former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) filed a cloture motion to end dilatory debate on the nomination of William Rehnquist to serve as an associate justice on the court in 1971. Even though the motion failed, Rehnquist still won confirmation on the same day.
A decade ago, a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of 14 came to an agreement that judicial nominees should only be filibustered in “extraordinary circumstances,” a description that does not seem to apply to Gorsuch.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who is running for reelection, blamed McConnell’s obstructionist tactics during the Obama administration for destroying the chamber’s tradition of comity.
“Things have changed around here. There was a new era of obstructionism ushered in by Mitch McConnell. He’s the one who has to account for changing the dynamics of the Senate, maybe for all time,” she said.
But vulnerable Democrats will have to walk a fine line on the nomination, knowing that if they vote to block Trump’s pick despite his impressive credentials, it will become a campaign issue next year.
“There’s a general dislike for the filibuster, and I think the president nominated someone who is easily defended,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who served as NRSC chairman in 2014, when Republicans captured the Senate majority. “Those two things combined make it difficult to rationalize a filibuster.”
“I would guess this becomes a significant political issue in states,” he added.
Conservative groups led by the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) say they will spend “tens of millions” of dollars to support Gorsuch. The JCN has a $10 million budget to spend right out of the gate, and Carrie Severino, the group’s chief counsel and policy director, says it will spend more if necessary.
That’s why Democrats in pro-Trump states say they will give Gorsuch a fair review.
“I’m going to bring him in, interview him and make a decision on whether I’m going to support him or not based on what I read about him in that interview,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is up for reelection in 2018.
But Tester, along with other vulnerable Democrats such as Manchin and McCaskill, said he’s not ruling out backing a filibuster later in the spring.
Jordain Carney contributed.
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