The Oxford English Dictionary needs to add a new verb, in light of the events of the past two weeks: “gorsuch.”
I am sure you recognize the word as a proper noun. Gorsuch with a capital G is the last name of United States 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch, who was just confirmed to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
But now it needs to be recognized as a verb:
gorsuch, transitive verb; Gorsuched or gorsuched; US Politics, slang: to defeat a malicious political attack through an organized campaign of public information and education. “We gorsuched the effort to vilify the candidate for public office.”
This might sound vaguely familiar because it is the antonym of another verb in the OED: “to bork.”
The OED and other dictionaries included bork after Judge Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court. OED defined bork as a verb meaning to “Obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) by systematically, defaming or vilifying them.’ ‘We’re going to bork him, said an opponent.'”
It took almost exactly 30 years for the antonym—to gorsuch—to appear. It happened because advocates for judicial restraint and originalism were finally able to assemble the same sort of well-funded, smart, and professionally organized effort to defend a nominee that the Democrats and left-wing activists used to defeat Judge Bork.
More was at work here than a slight Republican majority. Considering the demonstrated ability of media and Beltway peer pressure to make some waffling Republican senators buckle to established opinion, absent a strong pro-Gorsuch campaign the GOP caucus might not have been unanimous in exercising the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster.
Leonard Leo, on leave from the Federalist Society, led the campaign, along with a coalition of groups ranging from Concerned Women for American to the National Rifle Association.
George C. Scott’s General Patton in the 1970 movie famously said after defeating the forces of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at El Guettar, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!” In the Gorsuch confirmation, Mr. Leo and his colleagues clearly read the anti-Bork coalition’s self-congratulatory text, The People Rising, (1989) and turned it into a do-it-yourself guide to countering liberal disinformation and confirming a worthy nominee.
A turning point in this decades-long struggle was the decision by the pro-Gorsuch campaign to send Senator Orrin Hatch to the Senate floor shortly after the nomination to deliver a speech extolling what would happen in “Justice Gorsuch’s America.”
“In Neil Gorsuch’s America, the laws that bind us are made by the people’s elected representatives, not unelected, unaccountable judges. In Neil Gorsuch’s America, the powers and limits of each branch of government are decided by the Constitution, no matter whether their enforcement produces a liberal or a conservative outcome. In Neil Gorsuch’s America, the basic freedoms of the American people enumerated in the Bill of Rights are carefully protected, whether they are in fashion lately with the left, the right, both, or neither,” Sen. Hatch said.
The irony was not lost on those of us who remember July 1, 1987, when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy took to the floor of the Senate minutes after Judge Bork’s nomination with the original “In Robert Bork’s America” trope that spoke disingenuously of back alley abortions and segregated lunch counters. To watch Sen. Hatch, a close friend of both Kennedy and Judge Bork, turn that trope inside-out was to see the arc of the universe bending toward justice.
It was also a signal that conservatives are ready to play on the Left’s field, but do them one better. In the three decades since the Bork defeat, the conservative legal establishment has grown in size, organization, and depth. It has also honed the street-smarts to fight and win. The Democrats cried foul this time, sore that their nominee, Merrick Garland, had not received a hearing. Republicans reminded them that Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1992, had set down the principle that justices should not be confirmed in election years. Deep down Democrats must know they are dining on what they have sowed.
The Gorsuch fight showed that Republicans have a counter to their borking. It’s gorsuching.
As Judge Bork used to say, “Having your name made into a verb is a form of immortality.” So, whatever Justice Gorsuch accomplishes on the Court in the next thirty or forty years he already has got that going for him, which is nice.
Mr. Bork, is the son of the late Judge Robert H. Bork, and a litigation and crisis PR consultant in Washington, D.C.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions.
