Merrick Garland will be confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States. He will be confirmed with a bipartisan vote from the United States Senate. This will be a further indictment of the Republican Party, another reminder of their hypocrisy and total disregard for the American people. Allow me to explain.
Merrick Garland is widely regarded as a jurist without a party, the nearly perfect embodiment of the statue of justice, blindfolded with the scales of justice in hand. As the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit he leaned substantially to the side of regulators and vigorously supported cases that demanded governmental transparency. He upheld cases that were dependent on Citizens United but did not seek to expand or support the ruling in itself. Anyone trying to ferret out his personal political leanings would find the chore daunting. There was too little to go on.
So when President Barack Obama nominated the judge for the Supreme Court appointment left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia it was almost universally supported as a great choice, a legal voice without a paper trail leading to any discernible bias, a respected legal mind and a jurist beyond reproach. This was a man that could be trusted to make decisions based on the case before him, not who had appointed him. The majority on both sides of the aisle found him a perfectly acceptable choice to join the nation’s highest court.
That was the problem.
Mitch McConnell decided that he would simply not seat any nominee put forth by President Obama and refused to allow hearings for anyone in the last year of the President’s term. Seeing the real possibility of a GOP win in November, he blocked the nomination of, not Garland specifically, but of any Obama nominee. He would later gloat that preventing Obama from seating a Supreme Court justice was the most significant accomplishment of his career. The irony of this was that the Republican leadership all feared that Obama would name an ideological rival, a liberal counterpoint to the now deceased conservative Scalia. Orin Hatch, then President Pro Tempore of the Senate was certain that Obama would “…name someone the liberal Democratic base wants”, continuing that the President “could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man”. Five days later Obama nominated Garland and the need for the unprecedented blocking of hearings for a nominee looked like exactly what they were: an attempt to humiliate the President. The fears of an ultra-liberal justice were unfounded, but there was still the prospect of trading a fair and balanced jurist for an ultra-conservative one, and McConnell would not back down. He got enough support from his colleagues to keep the court at eight justices until immediately after Trump’s inauguration, and Neal Gorsuch, the hand picked nominee of the right wing “think tank”, the Heritage Foundation, took his seat on the court.
Though a very conservative justice, Gorsuch had more than credible bona fides to justify the choice. Trump’s next two selections would be more troublesome, but McConnell’s unscrupulous manipulation had been successful. A heavily packed conservative Supreme Court had been assembled.
Fast forward to today. The same voices that refused Merrick Garland an opportunity to use his in a hearing for a Supreme Court nomination are now going to vote to support him as Attorney General of the United States. Lindsey Graham, (R) – S. Carolina, called Garland “a very good pick for this job” and Trump boot-licker John Cornyn of Texas suggested he would support the nomination as he was convinced Garland would avoid any hint of partisanship. Ted Cruz, another Republican Texan, admitted that Garland had “…a reputation for integrity and for setting aside partisan interests in following the law” but still intimated he would vote against Garland, inexplicably saying the Attorney General job was “different”.
The difference was there was something very different at stake. The nominee could not be stopped altogether, and Garland was as good as it was going to get for the GOP. He truly does have a solid non-partisan reputation, and though they wouldn’t avoid his gaze if they were caught in their own misdeeds, they wouldn’t be unfairly targeted either. A fair shot was the best they could hope for. So much had changed. They were inclined to take that deal. It could be so much worse.
Merrick Garland will be the next Attorney General of the United States.
In related news, yesterday the Supreme Court denied the petition from the former President of the United States to block the N.Y. State Attorney’s office from getting his tax records for the last eight years. The decision was terse. It was a one sentence statement saying that the petition was denied. It offered no explanation, as if to say none was necessary. No dissent was recorded.
The Supreme Court, after all the manipulations and political intrigue to stack the deck, told Donald J. Trump to go away.
Merrick Garland will be deciding what cases are deemed worthy of pursuit. He will have a bipartisan blessing to do so.
I hope there’s popcorn.