Look at Mark Kirk for example. He could meet with Garland, encourage other Republicans to meet with him as well, and generally pretend like it wasn’t his fault that the Garland nomination wasn’t moving forward.
He couldn’t have done any of that if it had come to a vote and I don’t think he would have voted ‘No’ on a Chicago boy. Of course we’ll never know and that’s my point.
There’s a bunch of other senators that won’t face the electorate until 2018 or 2020. They won’t be on record as voting ‘No’ on Garland. If it’s politically convenient they can claim that would would have given Garland thoughtful consideration had there been hearings, but can’t say one way or the other how they would have voted since no hearings were held. They would not have this option had there been a vote.
Repeating the claim does not make it any more true. We have done this to death in multiple threads on the Garland matter. The simple fact is the Senate has previously completely ignored a president’s nomination (President Tyler), not even bothering to take a vote on a motion to table the matter. Yes, it was a LONG time ago. And it was his own party that refused to take up his submitted nomination. But it has happened before that a nominee did not even get a vote.
What had never happened before prior to the Garland nomination is a president not withdrawing such a stonewalled nomination and presenting another name. Now I seriously doubt that things would have played out any differently had Obama switched nominees, assuming he would not have nominated a conservative dream candidate. So perhaps it was best left alone and sticking with Garland at least had a chance, pending the outcome of the election.
Boo-hoo-hoo; things did not play our precisely the way I wanted them to!!
Politicians are held accountable for actions by their party all the time. If voters choose to not care about this, then that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I do hope you’re not attempting to imply that the republican party will punish its members for stonewalling Obama.
And it’s pretty clear that the bulk of republican voters have little interest in the government functioning correctly, or at all. I mean, they elected Trump.
President John Tyler’s nominated Reuben Walworth to the Supreme Court. And the nomination was tabled, so there was a vote there.
But as the Senate treated other Tyler nominees the same Tyler again nominated Walworth a second time. That second nomination was ignored by the Senate and no vote was taken as there was an objection to even taking a vote on the matter. Ultimately the nomination was withdrawn by Tyler.
President Millard Fillmore nominated three candidates to fill a SCOTUS vacancy and the Senate refused to act on any of them.
So please can we stop with this crap claim that the Senate refusing to vote on Garland’s nomination was unprecedented? It has happened before. It was the default means of rejecting a nominee in early American history. The practice was adopted first by the Massachusetts Bay Colony which was the source of the whole Advise and Consent procedure which was later adopted in the Constitution.
It’s highly discouraging to me that a person is proudly announcing that it’s totally awesome that a political party and its electorate have achieved symbiosis via the party being completely corrupt and the electorate being complete idiots.
Four times… and those were just SCOTUS nominations I cited. There were more for other nominations which were shot down in a variety of ways that never resulted in a Senate vote. It is just the way things used to be done.
While I agree that the Senate should have (as in it would have been the right, honorable, and decent thing to do) held a vote, pinching their noses if they had to, they were not obligated to do so. Obama got to make his nomination. But he did not get to make the appointment due to lace of the Senate’s Advise and Consent.
Personally, I think the more apt sports metaphor is from hockey; bodychecking the other team’s goalie. Yes, it’s quasi-legal (if he’s not in the crease at the time), but all it really does is encourage the other team to do the same to your goalie, to the detriment of the game.
Of course, in this case the fans/voters didn’t register enough opposition, so the tactic works, at least in the short run.
WTF? What I wanted is not really what I was posting about. I was posting about the absurd idea that there is no substantive difference between how the Bork and Garland nominations were handled.
With Bork there was a vote and senators could be held accountable for how they voted. With Garland there is no way to hold a senator accountable for a vote that never took place. Except for Mitch of course but he’s from a red state. Swing state senators can just act like it was something beyond their control because it largely was.
This actually happened and it is a substantive difference.
This would be an example of “rented mule,” in action. You have offered up the assertion I don’t believe what I’ve said as a reason to discount it, but I certainly believe it.
So that’s gone.
You also claim that Bork was “unqualified,” yet he was a Yale graduate with a career that included a seat on the federal bench for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and as the Solicitor General, a position in which he represented the United States in front of the Supreme Court. By any objective measure, he was qualified.
What he lacked were political positions palatable to Kennedy and Biden.
Too late to back pedal now. Your statements were unqualified and quite direct and clear. Never were you suggesting Bork’s seat was stolen only if you think Garland’s seat was stolen.