Klobuchar kludge meets the Gorsuch filibuster

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar specializes in avoiding outspoken stands on important issues. She looks for opportunities to lead the way on trivialities calculated to garner broad public support, such as her crusade against the threat to life and limb posed by “The crisis of the detergent pod.”

Senator Klobuchar is a reliable vote for the Democratic Party line, but she is quiet about it. She doesn’t want to upset anybody. She wants to preside over an era of good feelings — of good feelings about Amy Klobuchar. It’s a form of inanity that has won Klobuchar followers among the mainstream media in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Senator Klobuchar’s opposition to the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch serves as a case study. On March 28 Senator Klobuchar released a statement asserting her opposition to the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch. She purports to have discovered a few areas of disagreement with Judge Gorsuch. Her statement is to the effect: “I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.”

Suffice it to say that if Republican Senators applied the standard implicit in Klobuchar’s statement to nominees served up by Democratic presidents they would never have voted to confirm any one of them. So far as I am aware, however, Senator Klobuchar has not been questioned on the standard she applies to Judge Gorsuch by any member of the Minnesota media.

Senator Klobuchar strongly supports the Democrats’ partisan filibuster of Judge Gorsuch. Why? Senator Klobuchar isn’t saying.

In addition, Senator Klobuchar strongly supports the retention of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees generally. Why? Senator Klobuchar isn’t saying.

Senator Klobuchar nevertheless supported the application of the Reid Rule in 2013 to abolish the filibuster of lower court nominees. In that case she talked with MinnPost’s Devin Henry about it, stressing Democrats weren’t looking to change the rules on Supreme Court nominees. She told Henry that Republicans should follow that precedent.

She didn’t tell Henry why the rule shouldn’t be extended to Supreme Court nominees or why Republicans should take her advice. If she has anything to say, now is the time. She can take all the time she needs in the course of the Democrats’ ongoing filibuster.

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