Before a procedural vote on Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., started heckling the chamber’s presiding officer. Delighted liberals described it as the highest form of parliamentary trolling. In truth, it was a tantrum. And it was telling.
Either the current Supreme Court fight was over the qualifications of the nominee, or it was about the inability of Democrats to put a third Obama nominee on the Supreme Court. With characteristic smugness, Schumer proved it was about sour grapes.
Since the moment of his nomination, Democrats have hurled repeated attacks against Gorsuch. Listening to their account, one would believe that the judge was a plagiarist, misogynist, conservative ideologue. The sort of jurist who spends his days in dark chambers plotting against workers and dreaming about kicking puppies.
Schumer, with his back against the wall, couldn’t resist being a sore loser and bringing up Judge Merrick Garland.
Dredging up the old debate over the Obama nominee, Schumer asked the presiding chair if the Senate was “prohibited from considering and voting on a nominee to the Supreme Court in the fourth year of a president’s term.” Liberals cheered when the chair responded in the negative. But they missed the greater irony.
That debate is settled. Voters agreed with Republicans’ decision not to confirm Garland during an election year when they gave the GOP the White House. Apparently, Schumer and company just couldn’t accept the will of the people. And in their eagerness to pick an old fight, they exposed their own hypocrisy.
Democrats never really had a case against Gorsuch. They’re still just mad about Garland.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
