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Political fights could impact Senate negatively

As messy as the political battle got — GOP transgression, Democrat retaliation, an unprecedented partisan filibuster and, finally, the “nuclear option” — the U.S. Supreme Court has a highly qualified new justice on its bench.

Unfortunately, the political fight could well have negative long-term impact on the U.S. Senate and its formerly cherished reputation as a “deliberative” body, and it makes the nation’s highest court even more politicized.

This was a bloody, partisan fight reminiscent of a running playground spat but with much greater consequences.

It was triggered in part by the refusal last year of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, to even consider outgoing President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court, saying the incoming president should have that prerogative. Garland appeared to be well qualified but never even got to answer questions.

And McConnell’s refusal was triggered in part by former Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, and his heavy-handed change of Senate rules in 2013 — when Democrats had the Senate majority — to confirm Obama’s picks for federal judges by a simple majority vote. Under Reid’s move, only Supreme Court justices were still subject to a 60-vote cloture rule.

All of those machinations are the result of the hyperpartisan divisions that are likely to curtail, if not kill, filibusters and supermajorities — along with any realistic hopes for a timely return to bipartisan cooperation in the best interests of the whole nation.

But back to the direct beneficiary of the nuclear option, or some say “constitutional” option, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

McConnell, as expected, thwarted the Democrats’ filibuster by employing a parliamentary procedure that allows the Senate to override a rule or precedent by a simple majority of 51 votes, instead of by a supermajority of 60 votes. The predictable result was a 55-45 party-line vote to end debate, and 54-45 to confirm, with three Democrats joining the Republicans.

There’s really no question that Gorsuch is qualified, nor that he restores a moderately conservative slant to the nation’s highest court.

His credentials: an undergraduate degree from Columbia and law degree from Harvard, both with honors, and a doctor of philosophy from Oxford. He clerked for Justice Byron White and then Justice Anthony Kennedy. He was rated “well-qualified” by the American Bar Association’s judicial-selection panel (its highest rating), and is a member of the federal Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules.

He has a reputation for being thoroughly prepared in court, well-spoken and committed to the rule of law.

And unlike his ascension to the Supreme Court, the Senate voted unanimously to approve him to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which includes New Mexico — in 2006.

It’s worth noting, too, that he replaces Justice Antonin Scalia — one of the court’s most conservative judges, who died in February 2016.

Democrat arguments that Gorsuch is “extreme,” “dangerous” and “outside the mainstream” are without merit — except for pandering to the base. The real mystery here is why they picked this candidate for a fight they were virtually certain to lose with such enormous consequences.

Senate Democrats will no doubt lick their wounds for a while and continue their rant against the very tactics they employed when they were the majority party. What goes around comes around — and both parties would do well to remember that truism.

— Albuquerque Journal