Gorsuch: A Win-Win-Win-Win-Winning SCOTUS Pick

President Trump took the "win-win-win..." approach on his first SCOTUS pick. There's literally no downside to nominating Neil Gorsuch. If Gorsuch is approved by the Senate, then he replaces Antonin Scalia as a Constitutional originalist heir-apparent. If Democrats try to block such a qualified and uncontroversial appointment—and moreso if they succeed—they beclown themselves further than they already have in the last few weeks, (if that's even possible.) But that's wonk stuff that gets covered everywhere. The big win is how he caught everyone off guard.



Yesterday, like many others, I was still jabbing at Trump's flower-ceremony-like approach to his announcement for SCOTUS. After lots of long, drawn out teasing about the candidates on his list and how he was narrowing it down, Trump theatrically summoned both of his final candidates to Washington D.C. ahead of the official announcement. But a tweet from Sen. Ben Sasse helped me to see the drama for what it was.


A fill-in-the-blank protest sign! How desperate!

It shows that the protesters were truly caught off-guard. Normally, the rumor-mill figures out who the nominee is ahead of time. Little clues are dropped and, if nothing else, just watch for someone taking an unexpected trip to D.C. Trump managed to make the formal announcement into an actual announcement!

Their ability to use ready-made talking points was neutered and we were left with reactions to Gorsuch non-germane and ham-fisted. The best they had was to trot out the boring old saw that "originalist" means "pro-slavery" and "anti-woman." *Yawn!* As a perfect example, Sen Wyden of Oregon shat out this adorable gem:


In retrospect, I think Hardiman was a head-fake. His record can easily be summed up as "Law-and-Order" which Democrats always interpret as "oppress the blacks." He would've been an easy protest target and, I suspect without knowing, that's who the Dems were prepared for. But Trump zigged when they thought he'd zag! He put up the sane choice and the left was caught flat-footed.

Catching the opposition off-guard is win enough, but by picking Gorsuch, Trump has paved the way to the future. By making his first SCOTUS pick so soporifically conservative (in every sense of the term), Trump has taken for himself the politikraum to pick someone really interesting the next time a seat comes open.

Here's something noteworthy: As of this writing, searches for Ruth Bader Ginsburg are #14 on Google Trends. Apparently, she's giving a lecture at VMI, but I suspect that most people are checking to see how many ticks the old bird has left in her clock.

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