Bricker, I lean right and agree with the above paragraph, but I still don’t see that it justifies the Senate refusing to hold any hearings on any Obama Supreme Court nominee. We elect and pay legislators to do a job. That doesn’t mean rubber-stamping nominations or legislation, if a majority is opposed to something, they should vote it down. But there should be discussion and voting, not just sitting on their asses. I can’t see that objecting to a Senatorial refusal to act on something that’s within the Senate’s official duties (even if technically they can get away without doing it) is a liberal-conservative issue.
If the Republican-controlled Senate wanted revenge for Bork, let them grill Garland and then vote him down. Instead of legislating, the Senate was, effectively, campaigning for the Republican nominee for President. Granted, it worked, and the next nominee will likely be conservative, which is an outcome that I favor, but I don’t agree that this was the right thing to do.
I agree with Bricker’s post above, and think the following needs to be emphasized more (I assume this is part of what he was saying).
The way you deal with your political opponents cannot be based entirely on how moral or immoral you consider them. It has to be based on the fact that they exist.
I think a lot of people lose sight of this, both in these debates and IRL. The point of the “rules” (whether official/legal or just customary/traditional) is not that you respect the other guys so much that you treat them with respect. It’s that however much contempt you may have for them, they may have the same level of contempt for you. So unless you want to avoid violence and wars, you both come to some sort of accepted “Marquess of Queensbury” rules and procedures that enable you to get along. In the long run, it’s probably better that way. But the crucial point is that both sides have to keep the same rules. Any time one side gets the sense that they’re the only ones playing by the rules and the other side is just making things up as they go along, then it’s all out warfare.
You want to make the rules not apply to tiny fringe groups, you’re OK. They can’t do anything anyway. But to the extent that your opponents are a substantial percentage of the population, then if you want to use your view of your opponents’ morality as a determining factor, then they’ll do the same to you, and who is to say you’re better off.
That seems like a completely pointless waste of time to me. You’re saying they should have a completely phony hearings process, where the outcome is determined in advance and they’re just going through the motions. I like it better if they’re upfront about what they’re doing.
An on-the-record debate over an issue is not a waste of time. If Senators debate the merits of a nominee, and this debate is public, and the resulting votes are public, then the people have a record of the Senator’s votes and the reasons (or lack thereof) behind them to base their next vote on.
Everything is just as public the way they did it. Even more so, because they’re not making any pretenses. They’ve said outright that they are rejecting Garland because they’re rejecting any and all Obama nominees. That’s pretty public and anyone who wants can vote on that basis. (Democrats actually thought they would be able to make an issue of this in swing states, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.)
I was drawing the distinction between an action I personally would not choose and a belief that no reasonable person could possibly adopt that approach for any acceptable reason.
In other words, I regard the Senate’s action as unwise but not beyond the limits of rational response.
There are currently about 69,000 nominations submitted to the Senate in each two year period. (per Senate website) No way the Senate could give anything approximating a debate on all of them. That is 94.5 nominations every day, 7 days a week, for two years with no days off. We NEED them to rubber stamp most of them or nothing would get done.
So we really are only talking about a few headliner nominations that we really expect will ever get the full treatment - Cabinet posts and top department leadership roles, SCOTUS and Appeals court positions, and a very few of the top military leadership. A couple dozen at most.
Have you come across the idea of “playing to win”? Here is a long article in the context of gaming:
So is not holding a vote Akuma level game breaking? Perhaps - then the rules should be changed. Until then, it’s a valid tactic with longstanding historical precedent.
I recommend the entire article.
I understand your point, I think, but SCOTUS nominee hearings don’t always involve any genuine debate.
Maybe I’m older than you are - probably I am - but I remember Ted Kennedy’s and other Democrat’s performance during the Bork hearings. Ted would read some completely stupid and loaded “question” that his staffers had prepared for him, Bork would give a detailed and scholarly response, and Ted would completely ignore the answer and read the next stupid and loaded question off the list.
No because Bork* got his hearing. * The Senate has rejected a good number of SCOTUS nominees in the past. The Dems (and a good number of Republicans too, mind you, if some Repubs hadnt crossed over, Bork might not have been rejected, but 7 of the top Repubs voted against him) did not do anything new at all by holding a hearing and rejecting Bork.
It’s the GOP that crossed a new line by saying both:
They wouldnt hold any hearings at all, period.
they would not accept any SCOTUS nominees by Clinton if she won.
Beyond that, a hearing where the outcome is determined in advance and is not based on anything said at the hearing is not a meaningful hearing or a valid comparison to a trial. Maybe to a Soviet/communist show trial, perhaps.
Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution states:
[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
Did the Senate give Advice and Consent? That’s their job. It sez so.
No, they sat in the corner like a bunch of petulant 2nd graders, sulking.
I don’t disagree that the outcome might have been “determined in advance”, but that was based on his record, not his party. Kennedy was approved unanimously.
Garland was rejected before his name was announced, and multiple GOP Congressmen publicly stated that Clinton nominees would also be rejected regardless of who they were.