Merrick Garland was not a satisfactory pick to a majority of senators, so he was not elevated.
Remember what he did not have to endure.
R uth Bader Ginsburg’s passing has revived the myth of Merrick Garland’s mistreatment. In a New York Times piece, Adam Liptak and Sheryl Stolberg write that Senate Republicans’ decision not to confirm Garland in 2016 — after the death of conservative mainstay Antonin Scalia — to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land “was personal and painful” for Garland. Former Democratic candidate for president Andrew Yang declared that “after the treatment of Merrick Garland the message should be clear — let the people decide.” The Lincoln Project issued a poorly written statement referring to “the disgrace of Merrick Garland.”
Exactly what constituted the supposedly heinous treatment of Merrick Garland, who continues to sit on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals? The answer is that he was not afforded the opportunity to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Garland was doubtlessly disappointed that he came as close as he did to achieving such an honor, only to be denied a hearing. But Senate Republicans were under no obligation to give him one, much less to confirm him. Moreover, Republicans avoided personal attacks on Garland, instead arguing that, because the president and Senate had opposite views on the matter, voters should be given a voice in the kind of justice who would succeed Scalia. Ultimately, Garland was not a satisfactory pick to a majority of senators, so he was not elevated. Compared to how Republican judicial nominees have been treated for the past several decades, Garland’s treatment was positively heartwarming.
Judge Robert Bork, a renowned legal mind who had served as solicitor general and acting attorney general and on the D.C. Circuit, was rejected by the Senate as a nominee to the Supreme Court in 1987. Ted Kennedy made it his mission to declare that “Robert Bork’s America” would be a place “where blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids,” and “writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government.” Joe Biden said that “it appears to me that you are saying that the government has as much right to control a married couple’s decision about choosing to have a child or not, as that government has a right to control the public utility’s right to pollute the air.” The Democrats made no bones about it: Robert Bork was a fascist.
Miguel Estrada had clerked for Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and worked in a variety of different federal legal capacities when he was nominated to the D.C. Circuit in 2001. Democrats claimed to oppose Estrada’s nomination because of the lack of documentation provided to them from his time in the solicitor general’s office, but a letter from a bipartisan group of former solicitors general shot down this objection. Really, the Democrats opposed his nomination in large part because “he is Latino” and was therefore “especially dangerous” as a Republican prospect for the Supreme Court. Estrada’s was the first appeals-court nomination in American history to be successfully filibustered. After more than two years of battles, Estrada finally withdrew so that he could “regain the ability to make long-term plans for my family” despite having secured support for a cloture vote from 55 senators.
Of course, the freshest and most visceral instance of Democratic indecency in handling Republican judicial nominees is Brett Kavanaugh. After Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the court, Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was forwarded a letter from Christine Blasey Ford alleging that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while the two of them were in high school. Feinstein declined to raise these allegations during Kavanaugh’s private meetings with Feinstein and his regularly scheduled hearings with the Judiciary Committee. Instead, either she or a member of her staff — against the express wishes of Blasey Ford — leaked the existence of the letter to the press. Not a single person contemporaneously corroborated Ford’s accusations, and she was unable to produce any piece of evidence that Kavanaugh was guilty.
Nevertheless, Democrats proceeded to smear Kavanaugh and accept even more tenuous accusations of gang rape as fact. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut tried to insist that a passing mention of a female friend in Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook referred to sexual conquest. Sheldon Whitehouse did the country a great service by forcing Kavanaugh to explain the rules of “Devil’s Triangle” to him and revealing that it was not the sex act that Whitehouse suspected it might be. We owe Senator Whitehouse a similar debt of gratitude for helping Kavanaugh clarify that the term “boof” was used by Kavanaugh and his high-school friends to refer to flatulence, and not intercourse. Kavanaugh was eventually confirmed to the court on the strength of his sterling record as a jurist, the lack of evidence against him, and a steadfast Republican majority. But forevermore, his name will be tied up with the baseless accusations so gleefully parroted by Senate Democrats for political purposes.
Until President Trump’s nominee is confirmed, the Left will continually remind us of and decry the plight of Merrick Garland, who was cruelly denied one of the most powerful positions in America by a majority of senators exercising their constitutional right to deny him that position. Remember, when you hear the allegations of his “mistreatment,” that the Democrats opt for this euphemism because they don’t want you to compare his situation to those of victims of the Democratic Party’s thirst for power. Remember what he did not have to endure: He was not called a racist or fascist. He was not labeled “especially dangerous” because of the color of his skin. His name was not bandied about with the words “gang rapist,” and he was not interrogated about his high-school sex life. Merrick Garland was treated just fine, and those who lament his treatment have shown no remorse about treating Republican nominees grotesquely.