No, the reason for slowing down the vote is that Senate Republicans owe it to the American people to allow full debate and deliberation on Gorsuch's nomination before sending him to the Supreme Court for what is likely to be 25 years or longer.
There may be no mystery about the outcome, as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said at the start of a 4-1/2 hour meeting that ended with an 11-9 party line vote to send the nomination to the floor. But the same American people who figured in the Republicans' decision to block President Obama's nomination last year of an equally qualified nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, deserve to know what they will be getting from a Justice Gorsuch. They will be getting
* A justice who is a threat to reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and workers' and consumers' rights.
* A justice who is a threat to clean air and clean water regulations.
*A justice who would invite a larger role for money in politics by narrowing the power of Congress or state legislatures to limit campaign contributions.
* A justice who could be a pivotal vote for expanding presidential power at a time when the president is a constitutional time-bomb waiting to go off.
* A justice with no record of promoting racial justice or protecting voting rights at a time when those issues tarnish America's claims to liberty and justice for all.
Nine Democratic senators laid out the bill of particulars against Gorsuch's nomination one by one with careful citation to Gorsuch's record during 10 years on a federal appeals court and his year-long stint in the Bush administration Justice Department. Significantly, Gorsuch was often all by himself in some of the instances cited.
While at the Justice Department, Gorsuch drafted a signing statement for President George W. Bush that would have justified torture-like "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding despite Congress's clear intention to prohibit those practices. The passage was deleted in the final version at the instance of the then-solicitor general Paul Clement, no shrinking violet on issues of presidential power.
On environmental regulations, Gorsuch used an unrelated case to call for reconsidering the so-called Chevron doctrine, a 30-year-old precedent for deferring to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous congressional enactments.
As for campaign finance, Gorsuch called in a concurring opinion for subjecting laws on campaign contributions to the strictest constitutional standard -- so-called "strict scrutiny." The Roberts Court has invoked that standard to overturn federal and state laws to limit corporate spending in campaigns.
Republicans countered the charges by citing Gorsuch's admittedly outstanding academic and professional credentials and by accusing Democrats of imposing a political agenda litmus test. Democrats invited the critique perhaps by depicting Gorsuch as too often siding against the "little guy" in close cases. The Democrats needed to try even harder than they did to explain that they were criticizing Gorsuch's approach in analyzing and applying laws enacted for the very purpose of protecting or empowering individuals against more powerful organizations or entities.
In the notorious stranded trucker case, for example, Gorsuch took a federal law enacted to give truck drivers a safety-based right to refuse a company's instruction on operating a vehicle. Alone among seven judges to consider the case, Gorsuch construed the key term in the law so narrowly as to leave the trucker defenseless in his decision to avoid the risk of freezing to death in subzero weather while waiting for a long-delayed repair service.
In somewhat like vein, Gorsuch gave a narrowing interpretation to the federal law guaranteeing a "free appropriate public education" to students with disabilities. Taking a minority position, the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had adopted a standard that schools must provide some "de minimis benefit" to special-ed students. Applying that precedent in a subsequent case, Gorsuch opted for an even weaker standard: merely a de minimis benefit. The Supreme Court threw out that standard in an 8-0 decision issued coincidentally just as Gorsuch was wrapping up his Judiciary Committee testimony.
Republicans have been impervious to all these criticisms. They have voted in near lockstep for President Trump's nominees, even some with weaker qualifications than Gorsuch's: think Rex Tillerson at State, Ben Carson at Housing, and so forth. Betsy DeVos for Education was too much to swallow for Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, but they are apparently on board for Gorsuch.
Democrats have enough votes -- 41 as of late Monday night -- to block a vote on Gorsuch's confirmation under the current rules requiring 60 votes for a motion to proceed. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is vowing to change the rule if necessary to bring the nomination to a vote with a simple majority.
Even without the rules change, Democrats are in fantasyland if they think Trump would respond to a rebuff by looking for a consensus choice instead of going back to the Federalist Society-approved list. Recall: Nixon nominated Carswell after Haynsworth was defeated; Reagan turned to Douglas Ginsburg after Bork was rejected; moderates Blackmun and Kennedy emerged only on third tries; and Bush43 picked the hard-line conservative Alito after the weakly qualified Harriet Miers withdrew.
Democrats have a losing hand. Gorsuch may be as good as they can expect from this president. Gorsuch's challenge as successor to a stolen Supreme Court seat will be to try to live up to the self-portrait he drew of a careful, apolitical judicious judge.
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