Even though the Trump administration took the pro-discrimination position in this case, and even though you’ll have a hard time finding any conservatives defending the decision, I suspect that in many quarters on the right, particularly in Washington, there isn’t all that much concern. Just as they accommodated themselves fairly quickly to marriage equality, your average big-business conservative won’t look at this decision and feel that their world is falling down around them.
They also know — as do the social conservatives — that it’s the economic conservatives who drive the Republican train. The social conservatives may get most of what they want most of the time when Republicans are in power, but the interests of capital will always be taken care of first and last, with tax cuts and deregulation and anything else their hearts desire.
So when conservative writer Varad Mehta proclaims Monday’s decision is “the end of the Federalist Society judicial project. Gorsuch was grown in the Federalist Society lab and did this,” adding that the whole point of the Federalist Society and the whole point of electing Trump was “to deliver Supreme Court victories to social conservatives,” he’s only partly right.
Gorsuch was indeed “grown in a Federalist Society lab” — the Federalist Society was created to nurture a steady supply of conservative judges who could be pre-vetted and delivered to a Republican administration for quick appointment. But who do you think is lavishly funding the Federalist Society to make sure their interests are taken care of? It’s not social conservatives. It’s corporations.
