Maybe your stupid idea cobbled together with surprising ignorance of the legal framework could work. Maybe! We got nothing to lose by trying stupid ignorant strategies! So says iiandyiiii.
Do you know what “opportunity cost” means?
Even if you’re right, it’s no worse than a strategy of doing nothing, should this scenario come up again.
Though it’s not like the Democratic leadership is listening to me. We’re all just shooting the shit here. Hopefully you’re enjoying this process of floating ideas for discussion as much as I am. 
That’s not the Republican position. The Republican position is simply that a quorum of the Senate never granted their “advice and consent” to Garland, therefore he’s not a SCOTUS justice.
Based on this thread, it sounds like you’ve just described the Democratic Party.
Maybe you should have read it first.
I was more inclined to believe you before reading your cite.
If a President should bring before the Federal courts a claim that the Senate was acting in contravention of the Constitution, which characteristics of a political question, per Baker v. Carr, would you say that would have?
Technically, no, there’s no language that forces the Senate to move on a judicial candidate nominated by the opposition party. But behaving in good faith is the best way to preserve a political system that operates on negotiation. When you pull a stunt like the kind McConnell did, no, there’s nothing in the Constitution that forbids it, but as you point out, the GOP is essentially communicating that they can’t be negotiated with. Of course this has been apparent for a while when they tried to filibuster everything Obama did when Dems had the majority. When Democrats regain power they will do whatever it takes to get what they need done, even if it means operating against the spirit of negotiation and more so in the spirit of oppression. The GOP will have nobody to blame but themselves. Unfortunately, I can’t say that this is a good outcome because it begets a perpetual cycle of grievances and desires for revenge. It destabilizes a democratic government over time.
“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation” - Chuck Schumer, 2007
“wish granted” - Senator Mitch McConnell, 2016, probably
A "lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; "
The one-Senator quorum that the Republicans used was Mitch McConnell. The Constitution does not state that the President Pro Tem of the Senate gets to decide whether to approve a nominee; it says that the Senate as a whole gets to decide it. If McConnell can decide on his own, on behalf of the entire Senate, to not approve of a nominee, then he’s acting as a quorum of one.
As for how the President of the Senate would call a vote, he’d do it the same way that the President Pro Tem does. He’s the President. He presides. That’s what a President, by definition, does. The President Pro Tem doesn’t even have any power at all, except in the President’s absence.
It *really *helps to read your own cites before you post them, yanno? :rolleyes:
This is simply false. The (Senate) President has almost no power at all. Did you read the link?
The Senate President, by definition, has the power to preside over the Senate. The Wikipedia page you cite says so, too, so I’m not sure what point you’re making.
It’s easy enough to design the system to fail closed: if the Senate refuses to hold a vote, the candidate is automatically instated.
Obama won an election to the presidency, which under the Constitution comes with the power to appoint Supreme Court justices, with no proviso or limit that the President can’t do so in the last year of office. However, one Senator pulled a rule out of his turtle shell that the President doesn’t have that power for the last year of his term.
Except that same Senator has recently smiled, sipped Granny’s peach tea, and admitted to guffaws of laughter from his supporters that he would allow a vote on a justice appointed in the fourth year of the President’s term … when that President is Trump and not Obama.
That kind of unserious. Joker-ish levels of unserious. :mad:
In fact the Senate President doesn’t even have the liberty to address the Senate, unless it’s granted by unanimous consent.
All true, and despicable, deplorable and more. The Republican rule of ethics and alleged dignity here asks: “Is it illegal? Has anyone specifically codified this? Then fuck it, we’re good.”
The “proviso or limit” is that he can only do it with the consent of enough Senators. And, if he doesn’t get that consent in the last year of office, then he can’t do so. So if Obama doesn’t actually get that consent in his last year of office, but Trump actually does, well, then — what? Why should it matter that the guy mentioning this is sipping tea while just sort of being accurate about stuff?
Because he didn’t try to rely on a naked “you can’t make the Senate advise and consent” but came up with his last-year rule as a fig-leaf, and now is throwing that flimsy cover away when he feels he doesn’t need it anymore.
He can, constitutionally, be a hypocrite, and I can, constitutionally, call him one. 