The only pertinent questions
“Is your name Merrick Garland?”.
If we’re talking about questioning Gorsuch over his views or qualifications, or even probing for scandalous stuff, we’ve already conceded that he’s going to win confirmation. Maybe there is scandalous stuff that could deny him confirmation, but there’s absolutely no reason to wait for the hearing to release it. Aside from some scandal, there is absolutely no answer he could give to any question that would sway even one R senator, or one of the many D senators who will vote knee-jerk to allow any president any nominee whom the ABA has certified as technically proficient — ideology be damned.
The only principle that will deny Gorsuch confirmation is the idea that Trump doesn’t get his nominee voted on because Obama didn’t get his nominee voted on.
Sure, there is the little hypocrisy problem with using that idea to enforce party discipline on denying Gorsuch confirmation. Our side was dumb enough to complain that the R-majority Senate was doing something unfair by using its undoubtedly legitimate and lawful power to deny Garland confirmation by denying him a vote. Cowardly, yes, and that’s the idea we should have campaigned on to make sure their power grab was not rewarded. Whining about a use of lawful power by the other side was not useful politically. It's what people have come to expect of our side, so whatever benefit was already priced into the market. Sadly, the downside of being the party that whines instead of using its power was also already priced into the electoral market. That’s at least part of why we lost.
We took the easy path by whining that the Rs were violating the old unspoken rules, instead of using that breach as a teachable moment for the electorate. When the Rs denied Garland a vote with a year left in Obama's term, they rewrote the unwritten, consensual, rules the two parties had observed for over a generation. We chose to pretend that those rules were part of the natural fabric of the universe, instead of conceding that they were just informal agreements that either side could breach at any time, because the actual law and the rules of the Senate allow the majority the power to do what it pleases with confirmations. We lost the chance to make the point that the Rs had changed the rules to get rid of gentleman's agreements and get back to pure power politics.
The Rs don’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, therefore the Ds have the power to deny any R president's nominee a vote. And what the Ds can do, they will do, without holding back out of some professional courtesy that the Rs threw out the window last year.
And the Ds have to do this, they should do this even with a less ideologically unattractive R nominee than Gorsuch, simply as an assertion of power necessary to get us to a new set of informal rules that will allow the govt to function. Judicial nominations have become hopelessly politicized. Both sides should use their power to the hilt to prevent the other side naming judges to the federal bench. The only new dispensation that will allow us to continue to confirm new judges in the absence of one party controlling the WH and having a filibuster-proof majority, is to set up a commission of equal numbers of Ds and Rs that approves all judicial nominees. Either side gets to blackball any judicial nominee.
Yes, this means that our side never gets a judicial nominee we really like until and unless we control the WH and a filibuster-proof majority. Neither does the other side though, which is actually a win for us because it’s not as if our side pushes extreme progressives even when we have the WH and a Senate majority. It’s true that this system will produce a SCOTUS made up of ideological eunuchs, as strong public policy voices will be excluded by one side or the other’s blackball. Oh, well, that’s life. Let strong public policy voices exert their influence in their writings, not by their places on the bench, on the more circumspect judges who do stand a chance of confirmation.
So the other pertinent question would be, “Were you nominated by a Republican president without consultation and approval by the other party?”.