Democrats are "desperate to block" President Donald Trump's upcoming Supreme Court nominee — but they are "powerless to do so" and have "no one to blame but themselves," columnist Marc A. Thiessen said Friday.
In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, Thiessen said the Democrats' plight began 15 years ago when they began "unprecedented filibusters" against President George W. Bush's appellate court nominee, Miguel Estrada for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington in 2001.
"Estrada was a supremely qualified nominee who had the support of a clear majority in the Senate," Thiessen said. "His confirmation should have been easy."
Citing internal strategy memos obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Thiessen said liberal groups lobbied Democrats to label Estrada's nomination as "especially dangerous" because "he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."
"Democrats did not want Republicans to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court," Thiessen argued. "Instead, two years after his nomination, they made Estrada the first appeals court nominee in history to be successfully filibustered.
"It was an extraordinary breach of precedent."
Democrats also filibustered nine other Bush nominees to circuit courts, "all of whom had majority support in the Senate," he said.
Further, Democrats used the "nuclear option" to put liberal judges on the federal bench after they won control of the Senate in 2012, Thiessen said.
Democrats, led by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, went "nuclear" as the party "set about trying to fill court vacancies … with judges so left-wing they knew they could not meet the 60-vote 'standard,'" he said.
But Republicans hit back and filibustered some of President Barack Obama's nominees — and Democrats "again broke precedent and eliminated the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominees.
"The short-term gain of going nuclear was immense," he said. "Obama flipped most of the circuit courts from conservative to liberal majorities … but the long-term costs were around the corner."
That came when Democrats filibustered Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, earlier this year, Thiessen said.
"The decision to block such an obviously qualified nominee — praised for his impeccable temperament, character and intellect by legal scholars on both the left and right — freed tradition-bound Republicans to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and confirm him with a simple majority," he said.
"Had Democrats not tried to block Gorsuch, they would still have the filibuster," Thiessen continued. "And Republicans, who now have just a single-vote majority, would have a much more difficult time mustering the votes to change Senate rules today.
"But thanks to Democrats' miscalculations, the GOP doesn't have to.
"Trump is going to do exactly what Presidents Obama, Bill Clinton and both Bushes did before him: He will nominate a qualified candidate to fill the high court vacancy, and Senate Republicans will confirm his nominee," Thiessen wrote. "There is nothing the left can do about it.
"If Democrats are upset, too bad," he concluded. "They should have confirmed Miguel Estrada."
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