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If Neil Gorsuch wants to emerge from his nomination to the Supreme Court by Popular Vote Loser Donald Trump with his integrity unscathed, he should probably just withdraw now. Because his big effort to distance himself from Trump, undoubtedly orchestrated with help from Senate Republicans, has been slapped down by the White House. Now even Gorsuch's Senate handler, former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is on board with the White House line that Gorsuch is not at all "demoralized" and "disheartened" specifically by Trump's attacks on the judiciary, just really unhappy that anyone thinks bad stuff about judges.
On Thursday, former Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, who is helping with the confirmation process, issued a statement in which she said of Judge Gorsuch, “While he made clear he was not referring to any specific case, he said that he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”
That leaves Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), who insisted that Gorsuch got "pretty passionate" about the Trump attacks, hanging out to dry. Not to mention how it hems in Gorsuch who is going to have a much harder time demonstrating that independence from Trump he was going for.
The White House’s statements upended what had appeared to be a carefully calculated effort by Judge Gorsuch to gently distance himself from Mr. Trump’s attacks—what some observers saw as an attempt to blunt Democrats’ concerns about whether the judge would stand up to what they call Mr. Trump’s overreach.
While Judge Gorsuch may be working to allay those concerns—under the current Senate rules, he needs some Democratic support to be confirmed—Mr. Trump’s Twitter post and Mr. Spicer’s denials confirmed the worst suspicions of Democrats who were already bent on transforming the process into a referendum on the president.
It's going to be hard for Gorsuch to allay those concerns with the threat of Trump rage-tweeting—or pulling his nomination—hanging over him. I think Democrats can put to rest the idea that they have to tie Gorsuch to Trump. That's done. Now they have to focus on just how extreme he is in his politics, and the disaster he could be for civil rights, for women's rights, for the people.