60 Is The Magic Number

By Jaylan Waxter

As of January 31 of 2017, President Trump's mind is made up, his official nominee for the Supreme Court is Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch will replace former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who passed away last February. Gorsuch is viewed as the perfect successor to Scalia because he is a strong writer and a literalist. He also attended Harvard just as Scalia did. Besides his similarities to Scalia, Gorsuch resume is pretty extensive, he graduated from Harvard, Columbia, and Oxford. He also worked in the department of justice, and since 2006 served as a judge on the 10th circuit of appeals in Colorado. But now that Trump has announced his nomination the senate has to vote. Gorsuch will certainly receive the fifty-two Republican votes, but in order to get to 60 which is the magic number, Gorsuch will need eight Democratic votes in order to become the next Justice. Today hyper-partisanship is more prominent than ever which makes getting eight Democratic votes incredibly difficult. There are two reasons why Democrats will be difficult in this voting process. One is Gorsuch mirrors Scalia a lot, which is great for conservatives but in the cases of liberals its leaves a sour taste in their mouths. Scalia rarely sided with liberals and often voiced rude opinions and harmful rhetoric about liberals. The second reason stems for the Obama Administration, former President Obama wanted to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the death of Scalia but Republicans withheld votes in the senate and refused to allow Garland to become a justice. Now that Republicans need Democratic votes, liberal may attempt to use the conservatives strategy against them. In the case of Gorsuch sixty is the magic number, but whether or not he will receive the eight necessary Democratic votes is yet to be seen. In reality, Gorsuch will eventually make it to the Supreme Court because he occasionally sides with liberals and because Republicans could use the “Nuclear option” which could get Gorsuch in on just 51 votes. For these reasons despite the skepticism of Democratic, Gorsuch will more than likely be our next Supreme Court Justice.