We don't have a stealth conservative in Neil Gorsuch, popular vote loser Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court. No Democrat could vote for this guy and then complain that they were fooled by him and didn't know he'd be such an extremist. Consider his praise and clear admiration for Hans von Spakovsky, the guy at the tip of the Republican voter suppression spear. They were contemporaries in the George W. Bush regime in 2005-06—and Gorsuch seems to be a big admirer.
Among the documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee for considering Gorsuch's nominations are emails he sent cheerleading von Spakovsky's rise. "Good for Hans!" he wrote, learning the news that Bush nominated von Spakovksy to the Federal Election Commission in late 2005.
In another e-mail, when von Spakovksy said he was participating in a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Conference" at the Justice Department, Gorsuch wrote, "Sounds interesting. Glad to see you're doing this. I may try to attend some of it."
Innocuous? Maybe, but consider what was going on at the time in the White House and Justice Department—the infamous prosecutor purge taken on by Alberto Gonzales to weed out U.S. Attorneys who were refusing to prosecute bogus voter "fraud" cases.
In 2005–06 Gorsuch was principal deputy to the associate attorney general and von Spakosvky was special counsel to Brad Schlozman, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, who said he wanted to “gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the [voting] section.” It was a time when longtime civil-rights lawyers were pushed out of the Justice Department and the likes of Schlozman and von Spakovsky reversed the Civil Rights Division’s traditional role of safeguarding voting rights.
When von Spakovsky was nominated to the FEC, six former lawyers in the voting section called him “the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.” […]
Given that von Spakovsky hailed Gorsuch as 'the perfect pick for Trump," it’s safe to assume he believes that the Supreme Court nominee shares his views. The Senate needs to aggressively question Gorsuch to see if that’s the case.
Gorsuch has already cited Justice Antonin Scalia as a role model, who said the Voting Rights Act had led to a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Gorsuch, if confirmed, could be the deciding vote on whether to weaken the remaining sections of the VRA and whether to uphold discriminatory voter-ID laws and redistricting plans from states like North Carolina and Texas. In many ways, the fate of voting rights in the United States hangs on this nomination.
Let's put that less altruistically for Senate Democrats: the fate of a Democratic electorate—and their future jobs—hangs on this nomination. So his endorsement of torture and Dickensian views of labor relations aren't bad enough for you? How about having a justice on the Supreme Court for the next 30 years who will keep your voters out of the voting booth?