Louisiana Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy today exulted Senate Republicans’ victory in the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s pick to be the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court.
The Associated Press reports the Senate voted 54-45 to confirm the 49-year-old Gorsuch as the heir to the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat. The vote comes after Republicans on Thursday invoked the “nuclear option,” rewriting the Senate’s rules to confirm Gorsuch with a simple majority vote instead of 60 votes.
“The American people will be well served by this eminently qualified jurist of whom commentators across the political spectrum say is richly deserving of this appointment,” says Cassidy in a statement.
Kennedy, in a separate statement, says the Supreme Court needs a judge who will interpret the law and not make it.
“In that regard, Judge Gorsuch is as good as it gets,” Kennedy says. “Judge Gorsuch is a strict constitutionalist who believes that a judge’s personal policy preferences should not affect the outcome of a case. He’s a legal rock star. I am proud to have voted for Judge Neil Gorsuch to be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
Gorsuch won support from 51 of the chambers’ Republicans as well as three moderate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won last fall: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been recovering from back surgery, did not vote.
The outcome was a major win for Trump, his biggest congressional victory to date, as well as for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who kept Scalia’s seat open after the justice’s death in February 2016.
McConnell refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, a move that enraged Democrats but that Republicans now hail as a political master stroke.
After he is sworn in, Gorsuch will restore the court’s conservative voting majority that existed before Scalia’s death, and which could persist for years or even grow over the course of Trump’s administration. He is expected to be sworn in Monday, in time to hear the final cases of the court’s term.
