Thursday, October 27, 2016

Three Little Words Again

Back in June of 2004 I wrote:

So while presidents may come and go, their legacy lives on after them and the consequences of a Supreme Court vacancy can change the course of the nation. Anyone who may have doubts about John Kerry or quibble with his stand on the war in Iraq should keep three little words in mind when they go into the voting booth in November: The Supreme Court.

We’ve had more than 200 days to consider the fact that Antonin Scalia’s corpse was still warm when the Republicans announced that they would basically say fuck their constitutionally mandated responsibility; we’re not voting on another one of President Obama’s picks for the Supreme Court until after the election in November, if then.  Now there are those who are saying that they won’t vote on any of Hillary Clinton’s appointees ever.

As Ilya Shapiro at The Federalist smugly notes, the Republicans are fully within their rights to do so because neener neener nyah nyah:

Clinton’s admission that her nominees would “be in the grand tradition of standing up to the powerful”—like some black-robed community organizers—is far more damning than her nonsensical positions on Heller (Second Amendment) or Citizens United (declining to punish producers of a movie criticizing Hillary Clinton).

Should senators rubber-stamp judicial nominees of that ilk, who care not about the law but rather hew to particular policies, out of a sense of tradition or deference to the executive? I simply can’t blame politicians who follow their convictions. If you truly believe that a particular nominee would wreak havoc on America, why not do everything you can to stop him?

[…]

So when you get past the gotcha headlines, breathless reportage, and Inauguration Day, if Hillary Clinton is president it would be completely decent, honorable, and in keeping with the Senate’s constitutional duty to vote against essentially every judicial nominee she names.

There is a simple way to solve this problem and get the Court back to its full complement of justices: elect more Democrats to the Senate than Republicans and get a vote on the nominees.  It would be nice to get more than 60 Democrats elected so that there wouldn’t have to be a fight over the filibuster rule, but we’ll take as many as we can get.  That’s why it’s important to beat Marco Rubio here in Florida, Richard Burr in North Carolina, Roy Blount in Missouri, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania; those at the very least.

Because if we don’t and the Republicans have their way, we could be looking at ten years — assuming Hillary Clinton wins a second term — between the time Justice Scalia checked out and his replacement is seated, and that’s assuming that no one else leaves the Court, either of their own volition or via the hand of the supporting role in Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.”

Your move, voters.

3 barks and woofs on “Three Little Words Again

  1. At some point, Obama should have declared that the Senate has abdicated its role to ‘advise and consent” – particularly since they’re not even holding a hearing after 200 days – and just place Garland on the court. The (R)’s can howl, but they had more than enough time for “an up or down’ vote. They can pontificate about leaving the seat for the next President (or the one after that, or the one after that…) all they want, but without action, I’d say the Constitution would be on the Presidents side, in that no action at all cedes him that power.

  2. Some Republicans want the Supreme Court to simply atrophy. Who needs it anyway? It’s only caused us headaches viz: Roe v Wade and Obamacare. Onward Christian Soldiers!

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