Sasse accuses Democrats of ‘suicide bombing of two branches of government’

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said on Sunday that Democrats expanding the Supreme Court and ending the filibuster would be “suicide bombing” and called Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s refusal to clarify whether he would expand the court “grotesque.”

“It’s grotesque that Vice President Biden won’t answer that very basic question,” Sasse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Nebraska Republican said an expansion of the court, combined with the elimination of the filibuster, would constitute a “suicide bombing” that would “blow up” their respective branches of government and “turn the Senate into just another House of Representatives.”

Sasse also defended Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, amid warnings that she would overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act, saying she was “very clear about her jurisprudence, she’s an originalist and a textualist.”

Judges, Sasse claimed, “don’t advocate for policy positions … we shouldn’t have either Democrats or Republicans on the committee trying to figure out how can they divine the future of how they’re going to rule on particular cases.”

Host Chris Wallace pushed back, saying Sasse, who is himself staunchly anti-abortion, was “being a little disingenuous here.”

“Aren’t you in fact counting on Justice Barrett to either end or restrict Roe v. Wade, and wouldn’t you be terribly disappointed if she failed to do that?” Wallace asked.

Sasse again denied that judicial originalists held policy positions, saying: “If Amy Barrett were running for the United States Senate from the state of Illinois, she would have policy positions that she would lay out to the American people, [but] that isn’t what a judge’s job is.”

As to the president saying he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would rule in his favor on issues like the ACA and Roe v. Wade, Sasse replied: “President Trump says a whole bunch of things, so he may say something that’s more outcomes-based.”