You’re agreeing with my underlying point: Number of filibusters isn’t the real issue. What seems relevant to me is: Did GWB and BHO submit candidates with strong credentials and non-radical politics?
Filibustering dingbats is good. Filibustering good people just to poke a finger in Obama’s eye is not. Is that what’s happened? My impression is that BHO’s nominations have been far better than GWB’s.
I hope Dopers will add to the lists of “worst nominations” so that objective observers can tell me whether my impression is correct.
One of the basic problems is that the charts are largely misleading. For example (as discussed in the IMHO thread on the same subject), the number of cloture motions filed is not terribly informative on the issue of confirmations (or even, best I can tell, on the issue of filibusters).
But I do want to look at the “average wait time” chart. It works only be running the clock from committee vote to confirmation.
For example (as discussed here), for Bush the average time from nomination to confirmation for a circuit court judge was 277 days. For Obama it’s 240 days. (At least at the time of that article). But that’s becuase, during the Bush Administration, the Senate Democrats would prevent the committee vote from taking place. So that Bush’s nominees waited 274 days to get a commitee vote as opposed to 69 days for Obama. What’s more Bush’s nominees only went to the floor after being approved by a Dem-majority committee.
Thiswould probably be a more useful chart if we’re actually looking for a real comparison of confirmations. In addition, as a comparison of first-terms, Obama had a better confirmation rate than Bush for appellate judges and a worse one for district court judges - but still in keeping with the general trend.
As another thought, and this isn’t really directed at you but I don’t want to post twice, the D.C. Circuit is a unique case for several reasons. There are pros and cons for the GOP position on filling the vacancies (at least one of which probably would have been filed but for the Democratic opposition to a Hispanic supreme court justice). That’s a debate worth having, but to parlay that into “no judge to any court” is laughable in the face of the fact that the Senate has been plugging along confirming judges.
What standard do you want people to use? It’s quite obvious that you don’t like the Bush nominations becuase you disagree with them and you like Obama’s becuase you agree with them more. We can certainly play a game of least offensive judge filibustered, but what’s the metric?
I thought my purpose was clear. Those who dislike GWB’s nominations post those of his they consider “worst.” Those who dislike BHO’s nominations do the same.
I don’t expect partisans to come to an agreement after the lists are prepared. I want impartial people (if we can imagine for a moment that such exist) to be able to inspect the lists and reach their own conclusions.
I’m not interested in counting filibusters of nominations. Filibusters are a natural response to bad nominations. I want to see the alleged bad nominations.
Whether you can be impartial when these lists are presented, are whether you think I can be impartial is beside the point. I want to see the lists! Who are the bad appointments BHO made? That GWB made?
Your purpose is fair enough. What I guess I’m wondering is what we mean by “bad” nominations. For example, Goodwin Liu (who was filibustered by Republicans) is probably qualified but highly partisan. Peter Keisler (who was blocked by Dems) falls into the same boat. Harriet Myers is a unique case in that she was questionably qualified, but partisanly uninteresting.
Are you just looking for a list of least favorite nominees?
Okay, I’m in. I assume we’re not just looking at blocked nominations (although your point, as I understand it, was to illustrate whether judges were being blocked for good or bad reasons).
The difference is that the Republicans have raised no objections to the nominees in particular just to the fact that Obama is nominating anyone at all. No Republicans have gone on the floor to say that any of the candidates are unqualified, and they even have come out and said they just don’t want the positions filled, making excuses that the court had a low case load and so filling it to its prescribed number of judges was unnecessary.
Actually I think you would be better off doing the opposite, and asking of those that were blocked which ones were the most qualified and can the other side justify their being blocked. It is entirely possible that Obama nominated some real stinkers who deserved to be filibustered, but this wouldn’t detract from the point that unlike the Democrats, the Republicans were filibustering those that were entirely unobjectionable.
So can the anti=Obama side please articulate what was wrong with Robert Wilkins that makes him unqualified to serve.
And present us with an equally or more qualified Republican nominee who was also filibustered.
I understand the desire to extrapolate the fairly unique DC Circuit situation to a broader issue. We’re dealing with three seats (including one that has been vacant since 2005, for many of the same reasons) that were held up in part becuase of a declining case load and in larger part becuase filling them was a transparent attempt to shift a 4-4 split to a 7-4 majority in the face of some unpleasant rulings. Maybe that’s a legitimate tactic, maybe it’s not. But, to attempt to apply those issues to the broader filibuster issue strikes me as disingenuous.
There is really no reason to keep the 60 vote cloture rule on anything now and it would be unrealistic to expect that limitation to hold. I expect the reservation for SCOTUS appointments and other legislation to fall by the wayside in short order.
I worry that simple filibuster statistics (e.g. number of cloture motions) may be misleading. For example, if a measure will have less than 60 votes the majority may not bother to move for cloture. If a measure will have more than 60 votes the minority may not insist on a cloture motion. Thus the actual count of cloture motions may just be a happenstance of procedural details. And the raw quantity of filibusters, or clotures, may not be a good indicator of intransigence anyway.
That’s why I think reviewing appointment quality might give a better idea of partisanship. I propose to compare the worst appointments by GWB and BHO, but comparing the best appointments that were blocked may be as good.
Saying that because the caseload is declining we don’t need any more DC circuit judges is not true. Right now they have an overload that the current slate of judges can’t handle, and currently the overflow is being sent to retired and mostly republican judges.
So right now, due to the republicans refusing to fill this court, overflow casework is being sent to judges they favor, rather than to the court the sitting president should have been able to appoint. That’s why they have been refusing to consider any nominees. Its naked partisanship. The duly elected President is supposed to be able to nominate people for vacant posts, just because they are vacant now is not justification for having them remain vacant forever. If that was the case, why isn’t the republican position to simply advocate that this court be reduced to 8 seats only. Oh, that’s right, they wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t pass democratically through normal means, so they had to find some other shady way to force their will on the country.
The House should totally show up the Senate by immediately passing a rule that all House budget matters must have 60% of the votes before they go through. Boy, wouldn’t the Senate look foolish after the House does that!
If the Republicans are so certain removing the filibuster is bad for the Senate, can we expect them to reinstate it next time they are in the majority?
