Credibility is Earned -- and Lost

I suppose that you might have heard the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), talking here and there (i.e., anywhere a camera can be found) about the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be a justice of the Supreme Court.

Needless to say, as the good justice is sworn in today, he was not a fan.  As you might have heard 4,667 times, the good senator has been out there often amidst the folderol opposing Judge Gorsuch's nomination, frequently if never compellingly.  He is fighting a losing battle, of course; the Senate Republicans implemented the "nuclear option" such that the nomination of Supreme Court justices could not be filibustered, and therefore needed only a majority of senators to cut off debate and therefore go to a vote.

Schumer kept pointing out that since there were enough Democrats partisan enough to oppose any nominee of President Trump, it would be better to have sat down and come up with a nominee acceptable to Chuck Schumer, as if the country actually wanted to be run with him anywhere near the wheels of power.  As old Chuck would repeatedly say, instead of changing the rules, you should "change the nominee."

What he conveniently forgot, or at least set aside in his pathetic, politics-first mentality, is that there has not been a judge nominated by a Democrat who has been voted down by enough Republicans through either a filibuster or a straight vote.  When Barack Obama nominated judges like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who are certainly more leftist than Gorsuch was conservative, enough Republican senators decided that a president is entitled to appoint a qualified judge with whom they disagree, to where the judge was confirmed easily.

The Democrats have not been so kind over the years, engaging at times in some pretty nasty politics (see Thomas, Clarence).  With Judge Gorsuch, it has been ridiculous.  Gorsuch is immensely well-qualified and as highly regarded by neutral observers as you could ever expect a judge to be.  You listen to him in the hearings and you wish all the justices were as good as he.  The arguments against him have been without substance.

Now, this whole mess has come down to us from -- you guessed it, the Democrats and their rejection of the brilliant Robert Bork decades ago, setting a precedent that politics had a role in selections to the Supreme Court.  Well, the Democrats have set a precedent here that will come and bite them in the rear nether regions this administration, when an even more conservative judge is nominated to replace a retiring or deceased justice, and the Senate has only to use its majority status to pass him or her through.

All that said, the point of this piece is quite different.

The stupid things said by Democrat senators in this nomination and hearings are out there for all to hear.  Schumer looked like a moron; Al Franken and Dianne Feinstein as bad or worse.  YouTube has it all, if you have a high tolerance for horses' backsides.

Now what?  The Democrat leadership in the Senate has shown itself totally without credibility whatsoever in this.  Having spewed political tripe through a Senate hearing for days, how is it any  longer possible for them to speak on any topic and be believable?  The presumption they have left for us themselves is that they are completely political beings with no interest in the success of the country, just an interest in getting elected and raising scads of political donations.

Credibility is earned by sustained honesty and trustworthiness over time.  It is trashed far more quickly.  After these hearings, not a word from a Democrat senator, with few exceptions, can be taken as a true opinion, let alone a valid one.

They have lost their capital, and when you lose your capital, your respect, as well as your bankroll, is gone.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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