Ever since President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Scalia, the Democrats have lost their marbles. For example, Senator Jeff Merkley found himself on the receiving end of an earlier Moron Alert for claiming that the Supreme Court vacancy was a “stolen seat,” thus justifying a filibuster of Gorsuch’s confirmation.
Since then, news of Gorsuch has been relatively quiet. However, senior United States senator from New Mexico Tom Udall met with Gorsuch today. While he did not explicitly suggest whether he would vote for or against him, he gave the following idea to the press: Nominate Gorsuch and former Obama nominee Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court at the same time.
Here was Udall’s full comment:
You had President Trump saying, ‘I want to unite the country, I’m a deal-maker, I’m going to bring people together. Well, the deal right now for President Trump, if he wanted to do it, would be to put Gorsuch and Merrick Garland on the court at the same time.
Here was how Politico described Udall’s justification for his ludicrous idea to place ten justices on the Supreme Court:
Trump would discuss the option with one of the three Supreme Court justices often mentioned as retirement prospects in the coming years – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer or Anthony Kennedy – and secure a resignation letter from one of them, contingent on Garland getting nominated and confirmed as their replacement.
This entire idea is ridiculous for a handful of reasons:
First, the Supreme Court has consisted of nine justices ever since Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1869. The law states the following and it has not been amended since:
That the Supreme Court of the United States shall hereafter consist of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum
Second, the last attempt to increase the number of Supreme Court justices came from President Franklin Roosevelt in an attempt to pack the court in response to the Court’s continuous rejection of his unconstitutional New Deal laws. That was seen as a considerable constitutional crisis where FDR intended to use the legislature to force his agenda down the throat of the judiciary.
Third, Udall’s stroke of “genius” only represents a final attempt to bring another judicial “moderate” into the Supreme Court to undermine conservatives’ hopes of putting additional originalists on the bench. Obama and the Democratic Party lost their privilege to nominate Supreme Court justices and federal judgeships the moment Donald Trump swore his oath to the Constitution on January 20, 2017.
Fourth, and far more substantially, it justifies giving the President power to force the resignation of a Supreme Court justice in order to promulgate an agenda. It was an issue when FDR, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon attempted to do so during their respective presidencies and it should not be a normalized practice under Trump or any other administration. It is also a gross abuse of power for the executive to directly toy with the make-up of the judiciary to ensure that the Court may rule in his favor in the event of constitutional misconduct.
Nevertheless, Udall believes that any “true” attempt to unite the country surrounds the nomination and the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court even if it violates nearly 150 years of precedent and if it means undermining the will of the American people who want to see more originalists on the Supreme Court. Such pie-in-the-sky thinking completely ignores the laws of the land, undermines the judiciary, and presents itself as the last act of desperation of a party that refuses to accept that Obama is no longer the President of the United States.
Politico also stipulated the following for Udall’s radically moronic idea:
Udall’s proposal also mirrors an episode from the fifth season of “The West Wing,” when staffers for fictional President Jed Bartlet — faced with a high court vacancy following the death of an associate justice — persuade the show’s chief justice to also resign so Bartlet could announce a pair of nominees who wouldn’t change the ideological balance of the court.
As if anything that comes out of a fictional television show should act as basis for real-life policy.
You cannot make this stuff up.