Congress and White House in hand, Conservatives are buying the Judiciary, too

Last night I saw a TV commercial promoting the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 30-second spot, a former Obama administration attorney called Jane Nitze endorses Gorsuch, saying, “I don't think folks on the Left should be concerned about Judge Gorsuch becoming a Supreme Court justice.... He will approach each case the same regardless of the issue or the parties before him. And he will have a great deal of respect for folks on all sides of the ideological spectrum.”

I found this very odd, for a couple of reasons:

(1) I’ve never seen an ad like this before, attempting to sell me a Supreme Court justice. It made me wonder who would pay for such an advertising campaign (wink wink, nod nod).

(2) I’m not in the U.S. Senate and I don’t get a vote, so I’m not the best audience for this type of promotion. Or am I?

I wound it back and paused the TV to get a better look. Down near the bottom, in hard-to-read, tightly condensed, pale white type were the words, “Paid for by the Judicial Crisis Network.” A little research and my questions were answered.

I was not surprised.

The $2 million worth of cable advertising featuring Jane Nitze is part of a larger, $10 million campaign to confirm Alternative-President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) is targeting states where Senate Democrats are vulnerable in 2018, particularly those where Trump won by large margins. (They’re looking at you, Joe Manchin, even though you’re more Republican than Democrat.)

So I’m supposed to join my fellow West Virginians and pressure DINO Joe to support the Gorsuch nomination or else we’re going to vote him out of office next election. Right.  

The JCN is the same group whose “Let the People Decide” campaign helped keep Obama nominee Merrick Garland off the bench. “We are preparing to launch the most robust campaign for a Supreme Court nominee in history and we will force vulnerable Senators up for re-election in 2018…to decide between keeping their Senate seats or following Chuck Schumer’s liberal, obstructionist agenda,” said Carrie Severino, Chief Counsel and Policy Director of the JCN.

It will come as no surprise that a big chunk of JCN’s funding comes from the Koch Brothers, the oil billionaires and political donors who apparently aren’t satisfied buying Congress and the White House but now want to buy the third and final branch of government – the Judiciary – as well. According to Conservative Transparency, the Koch-founded Wellspring Committee contributed more than $3.6 million to JCN from 2010–2012 to pay for ads urging the Senate to block any Obama Supreme Court nomination.

Click here to read more.

The Daily Beast reports that JCN was originally established as the Judicial Confirmation Network, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group that didn’t disclose its donors while “drumming up support for Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr.—eventual allies for Antonin Scalia on the Court’s right flank.”

When President Obama was elected, JCN changed the “C” in its name to “Crisis” and spent millions to block Obama’s nominees to the high court and “to sway state judicial elections and attorneys general races, helping to uphold state laws backed by conservatives, nurture like-minded talent in the states and advance pro-business, limited-government legal agendas aligned with its donors’ leanings.”

Click here to read more.

The Daily Kos calls JCN “a pipeline for secret money to other, better-known dark money groups…which in turn have spent big bucks in state Supreme Court and AG races. It has spent millions in the states to get the conservative outcomes it wants from the courts.”

Click here to read more.

Now I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse – or maybe I do – but this is what you really vote for when you vote the top of a ticket. This is what you get when you’re a one-issue voter who ignores all of the other issues. You may support Donald Trump because you oppose abortion or you hate Mexicans or you want your coal mining job back, but what you’re actually voting for is a political party with secret donors who will easily spend millions of dollars to radically transform American government and society.

They're committed to taking away your health insurance, your Social Security, your Medicare, your minimum wage, your clean air and water, your right to choose, your right to freedom of religion, your gay and transgender rights, your civil rights and even your right to vote.

In the end, unless you’re a member of the wealthy donor class or your name is Koch, you’re the ones left paying the bill for your own destruction. You’ll pay plenty, my friends, and this is what you’ll get.