Commentary: Don’t Allow Senators Like Schumer & Collins to Blow Up Trump’s Next Supreme Court Pick

Chuck Schumer, Susan Collins

by Jeffery Rendall

 

“Dang-it!” Chuck Schumer exclaimed to staff gathered in his senate Minority Leader’s office after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement last week.

“I thought Steve Breyer already convinced Kennedy to stay another year and now this,” Schumer dribbled exasperatedly, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth like a rabid raccoon in its final death throes. “We’re gonna have a tough enough time of it as it is saving our people this November…and if we can’t stop Trump from plopping another one of his originalist Constitution-stooges onto the Supreme Court, why would anyone be motivated to vote for us?”

Schumer’s underlings stood uneasily around the 67-year-old New Yorker as though he was on the verge of exploding into one of his legendary fits of rage or would merely experience a pathetic meltdown and cry on the floor in the fetal position as he’s prone to do in times of stress. It’s no secret the man affectionately known as “Chucky” (an allusion to the infamous animated movie doll serial murderer) has aged considerably since taking over for “dingy” Harry Reid as leader of the hapless minority senate Democrats last year.

“Donald Trump was supposed to be an idiot that no one took seriously,” Schumer snorted. “Now he’s done all this stuff with the economy, people are happy out there and he’s unfairly gotten the chance to appoint his second Supreme Court justice within the span of a year and a half. Why didn’t we work harder to get Hillary elected? Does God really hate us?”

Still no response from the staffers who truly didn’t know what to say, realizing there was nothing to mollify “Chucky” when he gets like this.

‘This is going to be a tough one,’ Schumer thought to himself. ‘I might even have to pull out that crying thing and shed a few tears to get activists off their duffs and into the streets this time.’

Abortion, abortion, abortion is what it’s all about. Schumer retched at the notion of a remade Supreme Court majority sticking to the actual language of the Constitution and reversing one of American history’s most dubious actions. So what medical science has advanced 45 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down? So what anyone can now see a baby in the womb has a spinal cord and a beating heart? So what that viability for the unborn is being moved up all the time and Roe’s faulty reasoning has already become a relic of a tragic past?

None of that mattered now. Not to mention Obamacare is hanging by a tenuous thread. It all made for one heck of a headache for the Democrat senate’s counterpart to nutso Nancy Pelosi. “Maybe Nancy will know what to do,” Schumer said breathlessly, the staff nodding in unison to something “Chucky” uttered that sounded reasonable – and doable. It didn’t happen often.

He picked up the phone and dialed, wiped the sweat from his brow and straightened his tie. ‘Yeah, Nancy knows everything there is to know about being an obstructionist,’ Schumer figured.

–Just days away from President Donald Trump’s announcement of his choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy (slated for July 9), prominent members of both parties are making their thoughts known about the upcoming process. Most of what they’re saying is imminently predictable – yet there’s little doubt the two sides are preparing for what likely will turn into a fight to the political death.

As fictionalized above, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is laying the groundwork for a smear campaign of epic proportions no matter who Trump introduces to the country next week.  Katelyn Caralle of the Washington Examiner reported the other day, “Sen. Chuck Schumer, D–N.Y., on Monday called on members of the public to put pressure on the Senate to reject any Supreme Court nominee that’s on President Trump’s list of potential nominees, in order to force Trump to pick someone more moderate.

“’If you do not want a Supreme Court Justice who will overturn Roe v. Wade and undo the Affordable Care Act, tell your senators they should not vote for a candidate from Mr. Trump’s preordained list,’ Schumer wrote in the New York Times.

“’If the Senate rejects an extreme candidate, it would present President Trump the opportunity to instead select a moderate, consensus nominee,’ he wrote.”

We had this very same discussion fifteen months ago in the lead-up to now Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation. In case you’ve forgotten Democrats argued at the time that Gorsuch was too “extreme” and that his nomination should be withdrawn so the two parties could “work together” to find a “consensus” nominee who would earn majority votes from both sides.

This mystical judge could gratify everyone, a person who’s capable of achieving the impossible – interpreting the Constitution the way it was meant to be construed and still, somehow, pleasing liberals who demand legislative victories from the bench. The only problem is this super-human being doesn’t exist in this world and certainly not in today’s hyper-partisan environment where everything involves a massive public relations campaign to move an inch.

No one Trump’s sent to the senate thus far for hearings has met such a standard.

Theoretically with a razor-thin senate majority and no longer the threat of a filibuster to contend with Republicans can do whatever they please regardless of pressure applied by brainless Democrats and their leftist interest group ground forces. These people would one, oppose anyone nominated by Trump and two, don’t understand a single thing about what a Supreme Court justice does other than he or she votes and the media tells them what to think about it.

Face it, probably 90 percent of the American public has never even seen a Supreme Court opinion much less read one – and if a lay person did happen across an official Court decision they would think it was written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for all its clarity. Having pored over a fair number of such documents in my law school days I can say without reservation that the sheer quantity of citations in the opinions makes them practically unreadable.

If children’s books were that tortuous no kid would ever learn to read. Justices and their clerks must think they get paid by the pound of nonsense – it’s one of the reasons I had no interest in practicing law after I got out of school.

But Schumer and crew would personally drive the manure trucks if they believed bull-poop would convince a gullible Republican senator to lose his or her nerve and vote with the minority to block a Trump Court nominee. Not only would it serve the purpose of delaying eventual confirmation of Anthony Kennedy’s successor it would amount to a tremendous embarrassment for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell…and especially President Trump.

So Schumer will be turning on the obstructionist jets full-blast in the coming weeks to ensure every aspect of Trump’s chosen one’s life and career is exposed to the oxygen of the media only to sink like a lead balloon straight to the dredges of truth, fairness and decency. You gotta love Democrats – not being constrained by any kind of desire for graciousness has its advantages; as long as you’re sufficiently outraged you’re safe with the leftist base.

Why do you think its become so common for Democrats to make contemptable claims and get away with them? Heck, Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren says something positively disgraceful practically everyday and she only draws more and more admirers in Democrat circles. Ditto for Senators Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein and (insert Democrat Senator x’s name here).

The looney bin is missing an entire wing; the inmates have taken up residence in senate office buildings and they’re not returning to their rubber rooms until they’re sent there by the public – or receive a well-deserved beatdown from Republicans who hold the keys to the Democrats’ holding pens on confirming administration nominees.

By the same token Schumer’s tipped Democrats’ hand early by divulging that this fight will be all about abortion and healthcare. It’s a stupid strategy, bound to fail — like the public will go bonkers over ceding the absolute right to vacuum a fetus out of a mother’s womb or lose the healthcare law that’s bankrupted families and caused escalating government deficits.

Obamacare’s on its last legal leg anyway. When Republicans ditched the individual mandate in last December’s tax reform bill all the enforcement impetus for the law went out the window. There’s also a widely held belief among people in-the-know that the entire Obamacare monstrosity will be struck down by the lower federal courts because it’s no longer a “tax” and contained no “severability” clause in the original ACA (Affordable Care Act).

These issues will make their way to the surface regardless of who Trump’s upcoming nominee turns out to be. The question then becomes will Republicans unite to confirm him or her. There’re already rumblings from one wobbly RINO senator that she won’t vote “aye” unless she’s sure abortion is protected.

Daniel Chaitin reported in the Washington Examiner, “Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Sunday there are some individuals on President Trump’s list of candidates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy whom she could not support…

“’There are people on that list whom I could not support because I believe that they have demonstrated a disrespect for the vital principal of stare decisis, which as Chief Justice [John] Roberts has said is a fundamental principle of our judicial system that promotes evenhandedness and stability,’ Collins said.

“The senator added that she urged Trump to widen his search, and noted that the White House counsel had informed her that Trump had added a few names to Trump’s previously released list of 25 candidates.”

Senator Collins, the personification of principle, right? Hardly. Collins is the poster child for an establishmentarian elected official obsessed with her own power. If Republicans had 55 or 56 senators no one would give a hoot what Collins had to say about anything. She could go off on one of her tangents, pontificate about stare decisis with her Democrat friends and everyone would forget about her until the next time she broke ranks with her party to sabotage something the president wants.

But now that Republicans are teetering on the numbers edge and thanks to the establishment’s childish tantrum in Alabama last December and John McCain’s likely terminal illness, every vote counts. That literally makes Collins the most powerful person in Washington on this matter. And she appears to relish it.

It’s all about nothing, too. William Murchison wrote at The American Spectator the other day, “Roe by now, due to the love it inspires in feminist activists and their well-wishers — due as well to the culture’s acclimation to the idea of detaching sex and its consequences from childbirth — enjoys enormous support. That it doesn’t deserve such support is beside the point, politically speaking.

“Were the Supreme Court suddenly to sweep Roe down the back steps, with the household dust and dead insects, there would occur such tumult as the political process is not well fitted for. A likelier near-term prospect than reversal is gradual acceptance by the court of state laws making abortion harder and more expensive to achieve. This, while — maybe — the moral environment becomes friendlier to the idea that bringing new humans into the world is not the bad or oppressive thing it is often said to be.

“In any case, how useful to note Sen. Collins’ confusion between the abiding principles of law and the politics of the moment. It is a very modern kind of confusion, making the stakes in Supreme Court confirmation hard to discern. It is enough to know the present stakes are altitudinous: far, far less about Roe vs. Wade than about prospects for the survival of American freedoms.”

Collins might as well hang out at “Chucky” Schumer’s office for all the value she’s provided to the current debate. The Constitution gives the president power to appoint members of the Supreme Court. No senator has the legal or moral authority to demand a president expand his “list” to include someone acceptable to him or her.

As it should be, Trump will likely ignore Collins and send up whomever he thinks is best. Let the political chips fall where they may.

When the rubber hits the road public pressure will have little to do with whether President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee is confirmed or not. Schumer and Democrats can shout “extreme!” all they want and it won’t matter. The power is in Republicans’ hands; will they use it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reprinted with permission from ConservativeHQ.com

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