By DEXTER DUGGAN
Choosing Neil Gorsuch as his first Supreme Court nominee, President Donald Trump continues on track to have an administration more Reaganite than Ronald Reagan’s.
Are we on the verge of not even having to compare what Trump is doing with what affable conservative Reagan had done, but of recording how many ways Trump is exceeding Reagan already?
We needn’t turn to former actor Reagan’s studio scripts, but bold developer Trump’s skyscraper blueprints.
Recall Reagan’s first Supreme Court selection, in 1981: the nationally unknown Arizonan Sandra O’Connor, only a relatively new state appeals court judge, immediately recognized by pro-life Arizonans as a pro-abortionist pal of Planned Parenthood.
But the Reagan administration didn’t want to hear any critical words from the Grand Canyon State about this choice, a “moderate” Republican perhaps pillow-talked onto the High Court by pro-abortion Nancy Reagan.
There’d been some concern that Trump — with neither a long social-conservative record nor close relatives with that sort of known reputation — might name a similar disappointment. But as he announced his selection of the accomplished Gorsuch on January 31, Trump recalled his promise to voters, and their longing for such straight talk:
“Millions of voters said this was the single most important issue to them when they voted for me for president. I am a man of my word. I will do as I say.”
Underscore that. “I am a man of my word.” For eight agonizing years, the nation had just suffered under a president to whom truth meant nothing, who lied big as naturally as he breathed. Barack H. Obama took our breath away. Enough of suffocation by White House Hussein. The nation yearned for fresh air.
Gorsuch appears to have an impressive educational background, sterling record, and strong conservative orientation, highly fitting credentials to fill the vacancy created by the death of imposing Justice Antonin Scalia a year ago. Conservative and pro-life spokespersons hailed the Coloradan’s selection.
The Denver-based U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, where Gorsuch sits, serves as the final arbiter of most federal cases it considers. The U.S. Supreme Court reviews only a few of the many decisions filed before it.
The Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) issued a statement making points similar to many other conservative-activist organizations’. Its chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said:
“Judge Gorsuch is a remarkably qualified nominee with a conservative judicial philosophy and a commitment to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution. He is decidedly pro-life and understands what it means to protect the constitutional freedoms afforded to all Americans.
“The obstructionists who oppose every move by President Trump will likely challenge this nomination from the outset. That is unfortunate. The American people have spoken in this election. It’s time to move forward and proceed without delay and confirm this nominee,” Sekulow said.
Importantly, Gorsuch was known as a friend of religious liberty in the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases.
As Joy Pullmann noted at The Federalist on January 31, when one considers how extremely sensitive the Obama administration and its media pals had been against giving any offense to radical Muslims, one could only marvel at the lengths Obama went to harass and threaten humble Catholic nuns with crippling fines if they wouldn’t violate their consciences about funding abortifacients.
If only some GOP meanie had been trying to shut down a nuns’ private soup kitchen, media around the world would have blasted the Republican into tiny pieces. But when Obama wielded his wicked whip, hush was the word.
“Trump Tower” soon may refer not only to the president’s New York business headquarters but also to the soaring figure he is becoming, despite the foaming fury of media midgets who have spent their careers trying to drag the American people down to their loathsome level, where massive abortion is adored and virtue reviled.
If Trump has overcome some serious character flaws of his own, is it too much to hope that mendacious media can do the same and deserve our trust for a change?
Sometimes it’s said that what we need in politics is more business people, who know how to make a payroll. But once in political office they often prove to be disappointments because they have little or no solid conservative philosophy.
Perhaps by having done his deals at his headquarters in liberal Manhattan, Trump not only saw what was wrong with liberalism but also how to cut through its thickets. He was appalled at how politics was being run by people who’d often spent their lives supping from the public trough while commanding the public to pay however high the wasteful taxes go.
When the victorious presidential candidate sat down in Trump Tower with high-tech executives before his inauguration, here was a man in his natural element, not a community agitator like Obama whose knowledge of the workday world was confined to the condemnations of it by radical leftist Saul Alinsky.
Today isn’t the time to yearn to repeat the record of an anti-establishment Reagan administration that took power in 1981, but to surge forward with new power using proven principles and a grasp of what happened since then.
Reagan White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan later wrote a book, What I Saw at the Revolution, about her experience with the former California governor causing some D.C. earthquakes. Do you sense that we’re watching a bigger revolution right now upstaging U.S. political history and unafraid to assert itself?
The Democrats really are dying from their folly, but they apparently think their bones starting to poke through shriveled skin must be some kind of good sign.
During his eight years in the White House, Reagan didn’t have a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for even one single year. That was back in the 1980s when more American voters still could identify with the Democrats as looking out for the little guy with the lunch pail.
But Democrat leaders started giving priority to stomping all over the littlest guys and their defenders, unborn babies and pro-lifers, so voters reassessed whether they liked the Dems so much after all. Now the expectation justifiably is growing that the GOP is to control both House and Senate.
In the early days of any surprising administration like the unlikely Trump’s, there may be more hope than is justified in the hands of fallible humanity trying to govern. But fallibility may be tempered by experience and knowledge. A college student who never studies then fails his exams isn’t justified in saying, “Well, I’m just so fallible.”
If Trump seems full of himself, that may be because he contains a lot of expertise. Far better than arrogant Obama being full of himself even while he was entirely empty, totally hollow.
The Democratic opposition scandalously has tried to ruin GOP High Court nominees in recent decades out of sheer fanaticism, usually related to Democrats’ pro-abortionism.
Who can forget the pitiable Sen. Edward Kennedy — who actually had allowed a woman in his car to drown in a pond in 1969 — quickly rushing out in 1987 to pose as a champion of women and denounce and destroy the eminently qualified Reagan nominee Robert Bork? (Reagan got somewhat better after his Sandra O’Connor debacle.)
The gasping Catholic Sen. Kennedy railed that Bork would, gasp, discourage abortion as well as set loose any other number of horrors like racial segregation, rogue police, enforced creationism, and censorship.
Bork’s nomination was destroyed, but rabid Democrats were taking chunks out of their own flesh, too.
Radio talkmeister Rush Limbaugh observed on February 1, “I don’t think they have the slightest idea the damage they’re doing to themselves,” because dominant media never castigate them for such behavior.
Indeed, to read The Washington Post — which snoozed through eight years of Democrat Obama’s lies and lawbreaking but seethes with rage every time Republican Trump takes a breath — one would think the Democrats have grown increasingly powerful politically in the nation, even though the opposite is true.
Having proclaimed for months that atrocious Trump was virtually certain to lose to Democratic foe Hillary Clinton last November, the Post barely paused when it was shown to be so wrong, then started blasting out even more hatred against The Donald.
When Trump counselor Steve Bannon dared suggest in January that these media should shut up and listen for a change — because the journos appear incapable of learning — the story typically was twisted quickly to say that Bannon was just telling the media to shut up. Bad, bad Bannon!
With nothing significant to say against Gorsuch soon after he was nominated, House Democratic Leader of the Minority and the Incredible, Nancy Pelosi, was left sputtering that if you breathe air, drink water, eat food, or take medicine, Gorsuch will be bad for you!
Such is radical Democrats’ faith that only big government can protect idiot you from meteors and Martian death rays that anyone who wants to trim D.C. in the slightest is killing you. Except if you’re a human “fetus,” in which case you absolutely deserve to die.
If the Democrats fire off all their shots against Gorsuch, Limbaugh pondered on February 1, what will they have left for Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, “Gorsuch Jr.,” who hopefully will be of the same mold.
Make no mistake, dominant left-wing media know the stakes when the overweening High Court has come to control the very foundations of American life. Throw out the entire historic basis of marriage? Just five justices made the majority to do exactly that in June 2015.
The New York Times usually is as restrained in its typographical appearance as it is unrestrained in its bias. As soon as Trump had nominated Gorsuch, the February 1 Times stretched a headline all the way across the top of Page One, “Trump’s Court Pick Sets Up Political Clash.”
Oh, for the old days when the High Court usually was ignored because it hadn’t grabbed such a domineering role for itself. In Europe, it was well before dawn, but a random Internet search showed that newspapers in England, France, Germany, and Italy quickly treated Gorsuch as major news, too.
Great Optimism
San Francisco-area commentator Barbara Simpson, a conservative and Catholic, told The Wanderer that Gorsuch’s “sterling résumé shows a man fully qualified for the High Court. He has only one problem, he’s conservative: an originalist in constitutional interpretation, a supporter of the Second Amendment, he’s pro-life and believes the role of the court is to interpret the law, not make it.
“The resultant uproar by Democrats, led by Cong. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Charles Schumer, illustrates their desperation and intent to destroy not only the Trump presidency but possibly the country itself,” Simpson added. “They are shameful.”
Arizona conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer that “the selection of Gorsuch came as a welcome relief. He has a long paper trail and voting record on a number of definitive issues that comfort conservatives. It usually takes 10 years to know for sure what kind of a justice you got, but there is reason for great optimism on the right where Gorsuch is concerned.”
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