Will Democrats Filibuster Neil Gorsuch?
By Thom Hartmann A...
After months of talking about "resistance", Senate Democrats finally appear to be putting their money where their mouth is.
After days of testimony, Senate Democrats have seen enough of Neil Gorsuch - enough to know that they're going to try to filibuster him.
Chuck Schumer made that very clear during a speech yesterday on the senate floor.
"I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. His nomination will have a cloture vote. He will have to earn 60 votes for confirmation."
60 votes, of course, is the minimum number of votes Gorsuch would need to get to avoid a filibuster.
This seems fair to me -- Gorsuch has essentially been nominated to a stolen seat. Shouldn't he have to meet the same minimum vote threshold as every single one of President Obama's Supreme Court nominees?
Will McConnell blow up the filibuster? And if so, is that really such a bad thing? It's not in the Constitution.
Comments
#2
Obama's " Merrick Garland was right of center and they STILL turned him down! Now all of a sudden, with the new regime we have to vote in their guy RIGHT NOW!! Even though he is far right.. Don't the Democrats get more than one choice?? Maybe a human that stands on the middle of Justice? The Democrats lost a turn at nominating and deserve at least that!
#3
i don't want trump to get away with anything, but forcing McConnell to "blow up" the fillibuster will have the affect of making it clear that the man is only being confirmed using extreme measures on the part of the republicans.
As they have said about the ACA....paraphrased...: "the republicans will totally own this". And if he votes against their agenda, it will be no more than they deserve.
#4
Gorsuch went on and on about the value of precedent in Supreme Court decisions. However, precedent doesn't seem to mean much to him when it comes to honoring precedent. If so, he would have declined the nomination to honor the precedent ignored by Republicans when they declined to acknowledge Obama's constitutional duty to nominate a candidate to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Scalia's death. In this case, he seems down right happy to ignore precedent.
I don't believe a word Gorsuch did or didn't say. Can you imagine hiring anyone to fill a job position that gave you such vague and inconclusive answers?
We can only hope that the Dem's will filibuster. But, I'm not counting on it!
#5
Hi Thom,
Regarding the discussion of DNC chair of Tom Perez versus Keith Ellison, I would like to inform you and all viewers that I contacted Keith Ellison's office twice to ask him to go on record of refusing to accept money from Saudi Arabia under any circumstances. I could not get a simple commitment to rule out this HRC style outrageous corruption. I wasn't able to contact Tom Perez, but he supported HRC did he not? There can be no room for any Saudi money in the Democratic party, period, full stop.
Why not consider Tulsi Gabbard for DNC chair? She had the guts to go to Syria and talk about ending years of stupid war in which HRC/Obama sided with Al Queda and Al Nusra...unforgivable and immoral. Not an apologist for the Assad regime, but if he had no legitimacy, his regime would have fallen long ago.
I would like to add that this is what is wrong is 'identity politics.' The meaning is that it was HRC's turn according to some because she has a 'vagina' and many people including you, who should know better, went along.....being on the Saudi payroll while runing a 'pay for play' State Deparment should disqualify anyone.
Why not look for genuine merit regardless of gender? That would have led to Tulsi Gabbard, a strong but pleasant person who is against war. Yes, she is a WOMAN also, but that is just a physical attribute. Tulsi Gabbard has MERIT, and it is high time to consider merit before identity politics. If we don't consider merit before gender or any identity, then we will miss women and people of merit, which is what we have been doing for quite some time.
Sincerely,
Irvin Watinsky
#6
Hi Stopgap,
As an 'Independent' I agree that the Republicans were wrong to not vote up or down on Obama's nominee. I really wonder just how much difference there is between Garland and Gorsuch. Gorsuch didn't ask or instruct the Republicans as to what to do on the Garland vote. I carefully watched Gorsuch testify, and I was impressed by his demeanor, modesty, and forthrightness. I don't think it is fair to blame him for those who brought him. I also think he is principled even if I don't necessarily agree with him all of the time. He simply can't out of principle state how he will rule on future cases he might decide.
The Dems would be wise to make note of some principles, any principles, as they have abandoned all principle in approving of HRC who was on the Saudi payroll, prostituted the State Department, and awarded the Saudis 300 billion in arms sales now being used to kill innocent muslim Yemenis.
Sincerely,
i h watinsky
#7
Gorsuch is a low-life weasel and corporate stooge funded by a billionaire bastard from the get-go, who ruled in favor of soulless, monster corporations against little people in nearly all of his cases. Good god, look at his real record, not the glossed over crap presented on corporate media!
Filibuster; filibuster; filibuster! Fight back; fight back; fight back -- on all fronts without let up!
Sure, in the short term, with these greed-mongering pricks currently in power, it is inevitable that the People will lose some battles, even big ones, but if we hang tough, we will win the war in the long run. Think how bad it got for the patriots during the Revolutionary War before they were finally able to throw off the yoke of tyranny.
Bernie Sanders, the most popular politician in America, is trying to light the way for the Democratic Party, away from corporate power and back to people power.
Re-frame the issues instead of playing into the Republican framework. Be a proud liberal! Don't let the fringe, corporate right define what it means to be progressive. Keep it simple and direct by constantly harping on the things that matter the most, with which most of the electorate agrees:
Get money out of politics; quit subsidizing millionaires and billionaires, and make them pay their fair share in taxes; regulate Wall Street, so they can't steal all the nation's wealth; quit pouring money into the black hole of the Pentagon and endless warfare; strengthen Social Security by lifting the cap; work toward Medicare for all; raise the national minimum wage to a living wage; extend tuition-free education to include four years of college; get serious about global warming by cleaning up the environment and leading the world in renewable energy technologies, which would create millions upon millions of good-paying jobs that can't be offshored, many more than the outdated fossil fuel industries of last century can provide.
We are the wealthiest nation in history and have plenty of money to do this -- without over-burdening the middle class taxpayers, by simply keeping our priorities straight! Regulated capitalism balanced with non-monopolized free enterprise and intelligent socialism of the "commons" is the winning formula. That's what our Founders figured out, as well as every great, progressive politician since. That's what gave America a powerful middle class, the largest the world has ever seen throughout all of history. That's the formula the ruling elite is desperately afraid of!
From the perspective of the common person, unregulated, dog-eat-dog capitalism has been proven over and over to be a complete and utter failure, only enriching the few at the expense of the many. It ain't rocket science!
#8
I think the Supreme Court is fine just the way it is. Balanced. If you're going to add judges, then add two. One from each side. Neither side should have the power to unbalance the court just because their party is in power. The luck of the draw should not be the law of the land.
#9
Who cares if the Dems filibuster, thanks to Crazy Uncle Joe and Harry Reid, Neil Gorsuch will become a justice on the SCOTUS.
#10
You said it for me, thanks!
Fillibuster!!
#11
Done deal. One down, two more to go. Thanks Harry and crazy uncle Joe.
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