Last week I got a fundraising letter from someone I greatly respect, Lt. Gen. William Boykin. He wrote on behalf of the Family Research Council. The email asked for money to help stop a Democratic filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch. It’s pointless to reply to such mass emails, but that didn’t stop me. I wrote back, respectfully, asking where I could give to make sure that the Democrats did that.

I didn’t hear back from the general, but God has answered my prayer. As The Washington Post reports:

Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch ended Thursday on a confrontational note, with the body’s top Democrat vowing a filibuster that could complicate Gorsuch’s expected confirmation and ultimately upend the traditional approach to approving justices.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will vote no on President Trump’s nominee and asked other Democrats to join him in blocking an up-or-down vote on Gorsuch.

Under Senate rules, it requires 60 votes to overcome such an obstacle. Republicans eager to confirm Gorsuch before their Easter recess — and before the court concludes hearing the current term of cases next month — have only 52 senators.

Republicans have vowed Gorsuch will be confirmed even if it means overhauling the way justices have long been approved. Traditionally, senators can force the Senate to muster a supermajority just to bring up the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. If that is reached, the confirmation requires a simple majority.

…

There are also competing views among Democrats about whether to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination — which could provoke the Republican majority to rewrite the rules — or instead avoid confrontation and preserve the filibuster threat for the future. Retaining the filibuster could force Trump to select a relatively moderate nominee if in the coming years he gets a chance to replace a second Supreme Court justice.

Please Mr. Democrat, Don’t Throw Me in that Filibuster Patch!

I’ve already laid out the reasons why we ought to welcome such a filibuster:

We conservatives are in a strong position now. In a year or two, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg or another justice finally retires, the balance of power will be different. And the stakes will be infinitely higher. The next SCOTUS nominee won’t just serve to restore the Court’s balance. … The next vote could tip it.

…

If the filibuster still exists when we have to fight that battle, count on a few squishy GOP senators (who don’t really want to overturn Roe v. Wade anyway, in their heart of hearts) to “reluctantly” side with the Democrats. And we’ll end up with some Republican version of Merrick Garland, or worse.

Also:

A filibuster now would be so obviously partisan and absurd that it would be easy to justify trashing the filibuster forever. And that is what we need to do, if we are serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, and removing the Supreme Court as a weapon of leftist rule by decree on every crucial social and Constitutional issue.

Indeed, Judge Gorsuch has done a stellar job before the Senate. (I’ve worried here that future jurists like Gorsuch and Senator Ted Cruz will simply be kept out of top law schools in years to come.) On Gorsuch, there is nothing like the raw (if rotten) red meat on issues of race, such as the left claimed to have on Attorney General Sessions. Nope.

Democrats Nakedly Flail to Keep the Power to Mock Our Votes

Gorsuch is utterly qualified. He is calm, judicious and brilliant. He simply disagrees with Democrats on what the Constitution means, especially on abortion. That’s why they’re planning to fight him with everything they have. Paul Waldman of The Washington Post admits as much, and knows that the Democrats will lose. He even knows that they will blow up their last defense against future Trump appointees, the filibuster. But he still urges them to do it. And so do I.

The judicial “filibuster” is just a tool for Democrats to keep abortion legal despite the voters. Let’s toss this blood-stained cudgel in the trash.

There’s nothing venerable about the judicial filibuster. It’s neither judicious nor a filibuster. No one makes speeches and it doesn’t hold up Senate business. It’s a cheap procedural trick from the 1980s invented by Democrats after they Borked Robert Bork. Nor is the filibuster a valuable weapon for Republicans. On the Supreme Court, which matters supremely, they’ve never had the nerve to use it. They never will. So it’s just a tool for Democrats to keep abortion legal despite the voters. Let’s toss this blood-stained cudgel in the trash with our 1980s pagers.

Let’s Close the Permanent Constitutional Convention

Waldman, like Schumer, is part of the dead-end brigade that has never accepted Trump’s election as legitimate. It’s not just your and my votes in presidential elections these elitists want to cancel, of course. For decades they’ve been pretending that the U.S. Constitution guarantees in ironclad principles the victory of the Left. Our votes, even the laws we have labored to pass, just went into the shredder. No matter how liberals had to twist and torture its text, they knew they could get away with it if they could just pack the courts. That way, instead of amending the Constitution or even winning a vote in Congress, they could stuff their judicial philosophy down our throats.

The Democrats view the Supreme Court as a tool to make sure they win, however we vote. That ends now, with the end of the Senate judicial filibuster.

As the late Justice Scalia pointed out, when Americans wanted to give women the vote, they amended the Constitution. They didn’t find five justices of the Supreme Court who would pretend that the Constitution had always meant to do that. When feminists wanted to erase all legal distinctions between the sexes, they tried to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Thanks to Phyllis Schlafly, they failed. They will never try again. Instead they’ll treat the Supreme Court as a permanent, sitting Constitutional convention. Its job is to make sure that however many Christians or conservatives vote, it doesn’t matter. The left still wins.

When Hitler Blundered

A nice gig, if you can get it. No wonder the left is throwing a self-destructive tantrum when it’s threatened. By rejecting Merrick Garland, the Republicans in the Senate for the first time showed some spine. The Democrats saw that as cheating. In the same way, they think that Donald Trump cheated by appealing to working people. So they’re sputtering with rage. Let them sputter and saw off the last limb they sit on. Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake.

As a World War II buff I know that Pearl Harbor only got the U.S. into a war with Japan. President Roosevelt rightly saw Adolf Hitler as an even greater threat than the Japanese. But he feared that he couldn’t persuade isolationists in Congress to declare war on Germany too. It hadn’t attacked us. In the same way, some Senate Republicans have been timid about dismantling the filibuster.

But Hitler saved FDR the trouble. In a fit of pique, he stepped up and responded to Pearl Harbor by declaring war on the U.S. That let Roosevelt concentrate for the first three years on beating Hitler. It was our guns and trucks and money that kept the Russians fighting, and turned the tide in the war.

Now Senator Schumer has saved pro-lifers the trouble of trying to convince our weak Senate sisters to junk the filibuster. He has guaranteed that Trump’s next appointment will be more like Ted Cruz or Jeff Sessions than David Souter or Anthony Kennedy. Some wag should “thank him” by sending him the text of Hitler’s declaration of war.