AP Ignores Dems' Pre-Election Filibuster Plans, Tags Merrick Garland a 'Liberal-Leaning Moderate'

January 5th, 2017 5:25 PM

Wednesday afternoon, the Associated Press's Mary Clare Jalonick served as Democratic Party Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's mouthpiece, relaying his promise to "oppose with everything we have" any Supreme Court nominee who isn't fit the Senator's definition of "mainstream."

In the process, she incorrectly characterized the judicial track record of Merrick Garland, the person President Barack Obama nominated for the open Supreme Court seat in 2015 but whose nomination never advanced in the GOP-controlled Senate, and created the false impression that a Republican move to prevent a filibuster on Supreme Court nominee is something that has never previously been contemplated.

Here are the relevant passages from Jalonick's dispatch (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Top Senate Dem warns Trump on Supreme Court pick

The top Democrat in the Senate is warning President-elect Donald Trump about his eventual Supreme Court choice: Name a "mainstream" nominee or Democrats will oppose the individual "with everything we have."

"My worry is, with the hard right running the show, that the likelihood of the nominee being mainstream is decreasing every day," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said Wednesday in an interview.

The idea that the incoming Trump administration is "hard right" in any meaningful sense will come as news to almost everyone who isn't on the far-left. The working class male and female voters who put Trump over the top in key Midwestern states and broke Hillary Clinton's mythical "blue wall" certainly don't see him as "far-right."

But of course, the press, which leans left to far-left (seemingly moreso the latter with each passing year) would love redefine any politician to the right of Trump on any issue as so "out there" as to be not worthy of notice — as a steppingstone to marginalizing Trump himself.

Continuing:

As minority leader, Schumer won't have the same power as McConnell to block a nominee. But his words signal that Democrats could filibuster and force Republicans to round up 60 votes to move ahead. That will be a challenge for the GOP since they only hold 52 seats.

If Republicans can't get enough Democratic votes, then they do have another option - change the rules and curb the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., did that for lower court nominees and other nominations in 2013.

How convenient that Jalonick "forgot" that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to curb the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if the Democrats had won a Senate majority in November.

As John Sexton at Hot Air noted on November 18:

It’s worth noting that just last month, when Democrats expected to win the Senate and the White House, Harry Reid was once again threatening to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. “It’s clear to me that if the Republicans try to filibuster another circuit court judge, but especially a Supreme Court justice, I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it. I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again,” Reid told Talking Points Memo.

The fact that the Democrats didn't get their majority doesn't change the fact that if they had, they would have imposed a filibuster curb on Supreme Court nominees. Not that the charges won't be hypocritically hurled anyway, but that clears the GOP-controlled Senate to do the same thing if Democratic Party obstruction forces their hand.

Finally, here's Jalonick's rendering of Merrick Garland's judicial stances as a potential Supreme Court nominee:

Schumer didn't define what he meant by "mainstream." But he did say on Maddow's show that Garland, Obama's unsuccessful pick, was "a very moderate, mainstream nominee." Garland has been considered a liberal-leaning moderate in his years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The "liberal-leaning moderate" tag, when employed by a U.S. establishment press member, is usually a dead giveaway for "strong leftist." The "strong leftist" tag fits Garland like a glove, as seen in the following excerpt from Conservative Review in March of last year (links are in original):

... Garland’s long judicial history leaves no doubt that he would be the solid fifth vote that President Obama and his liberal, progressive allies want on the Court to eviscerate any remaining limits on the power of the federal government; to roll back portions of the Bill of Rights they don’t like, such as the First and Second Amendments; and to create rights that don’t exist out of the “penumbras” of the Constitution.

Think Progress, the voice of the Left, says “that Garland would side with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc in divided cases.”  New York Magazine makes no bones about the fact that on the “most important issues facing the court – the environment and labor law, to name two – Garland is every bit as progressive as [Justice] Stevens.”  An article in the New York Times reporting on a measure of ideology by four political scientists puts Garland to the left of Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, right next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, the two most consistently left-wing justices on the Court.

Garland is certainly hostile to the Second Amendment.  In 2007, he voted in favor of en banc review of the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision invalidating the D.C. gun ban.  In other words, he wanted to reconsider this decision, which the Supreme Court eventually affirmed in the historic Heller case, which finally established the “right to bear arms” as an individual right held by all Americans.

... On the First Amendment, Garland joined a 2008 opinion that invalidated campaign finance regulations issued by the Federal Election Commission because they weren’t stringent enough ...

... How dangerous would Garland’s confirmation be?  So damaging that the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small businesses across the country, for the first time in its more than 70-year history is opposing a Supreme Court nominee.  Juanita Duggan, the president and CEO of the NFIB, says that Garland “would be a strong ally of the regulatory bureaucracy, big labor and trial lawyers.” And his decisions bear that out.

Here's more from National Review earlier that month:

... Garland has a long record, and, among other things, it leads to the conclusion that he would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalia’s most important opinions, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.

... (Garland's track record signals) that he’s willing to uphold executive actions that violate the rights of gun owners.  That’s not so moderate, is it?

It's not moderate at all, especially considering the "pen and phone" executive order-laden presidency which is about to expire — except to far-left Democratic senators like Chuck Schumer and their establishment press mouthpieces like the AP's Jalonick.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.