Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley made the following statement regarding the new and ever changing standards Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is placing on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
“The problem Democrats are running into is that Judge Gorsuch clears every hurdle they place in front of him. First, the Minority Leader demanded a ‘mainstream’ nominee. Confirmed in 2006 without a single no vote, Judge Gorsuch is obviously a mainstream nominee who enjoys broad, bipartisan support. Then they threatened a filibuster, only they didn’t call it a filibuster, and instead claimed Supreme Court nominees are always subject to a 60-vote ‘threshold.’ That effort was widely panned as bogus by fact checkers. Then they created the new ‘independence’ standard that everyone recognized as a thin justification for opposition to this nominee.
“The latest is that Judge Gorsuch isn’t being open enough and answering questions. For years, the gold standard for how nominees should answer questions about their views on specific cases or issues was stated best by Justice Ginsburg. She said at her confirmation hearing that a nominee should offer, ‘no hints, no forecasts, no previews’ on future voting decisions. Since then we’ve seen nominee after nominee cite his or her obligation not to answer such questions. While Congress might like to have those answers, everyone has recognized this understanding, known as the ‘Ginsburg Standard.’ Answering these questions would compromise the judge’s independence and ability to render fair and impartial decisions in the future.”
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