I would be semi-pleased if those Senators were primaried, as the Republicans would probably pick up those seats. (The Democrats have very little chance of picking up the Senate in 2018 any, but every extra seat helps.) OTOH, the rest of the Democrats would be pushed to the left in reaction.
I don’t know if it would happen. Depends on how much of a Democratic base there is in those states. Not much, is my sense. The problems the TP caused for the Republicans were largely from primarying elected officials or electable candidates in purple or blue states, e.g. DE, NV, CO. You won’t see the TP going after Collins, for example.
Eh, those Freedom Caucus guys have done their fair share of meaningless votes (in my opinion anyway) and it seems to fire up their base. I don’t think it’s necessarily a victory of any practical kind, but I think as a messaging statement it works now. There’s a bunch of angry pissed liberals out there right now, and saying “I voted against Trump’s nominee! #resist!” plays better than “We went ahead and voted for Gorsuch this time because this way we preserved a hard to describe procedural rule which might possibly allow us to block a different nominee at a future time, assuming that Mitch McConnell will allow us to without using the nuclear option then, as we totally trust them to not screw us in order to replace a liberal vote on the Court should one occur, we have no leverage to actually enforce this deal thank you, we are the adults in the room please vote Democratic.”
It’s probably in the abstract bad for the filibuster to die, but it seems pretty illusory at the moment anyway, so it doesn’t seem like a big loss to me. It’s possible that either option will screw over red state Dem Senators, they’ll have to make their own choices on it.
The only chance the party has is for Democrats to be energized and motivated. 2010 is what happens when Democratic senators and congress folks get scared and run to the middle.
So – sometimes they’re doing what they can to stop developments they don’t like, and sometimes they’re doing what they can to help along developments they do like? Isn’t that kind of like [del]a prisoner[/del] pretty much everybody?
The cloture rule - or colloquially, today’s filibuster - is an often used procedure. There are no hoops to jump through to employ it. There is no need to tilt your head sideways and squint just right to find a precedent for calling for a filibuster. Unlike, say, some bullshit rule about your not allowed to nominate for SCOTUS in the last year of your presidency.
No. I said the Democrats are employing the well worn rules (whether employed on a Supreme Court Justice or not (which I never claimed) don’t matter a whit), where the Republicans had to make up a reason to avoid the rules altogether and just not even hold hearings.
Dude, the Republicans lost their claim on being the adults in the room when Gee Dubya decided he was going to play Risk in the Middle East. And they doubled down on that by gutting FEMA and putting people like Chertoff and Heckuva Job Brownie in charge. Then doing nothing but singing “I’m Against It” for eight years while Obama was the adult in the room. And finally, nominating a lazy ignoramus for President, and falling in behind him and supporting him, rather than gutting his nomination.
Kids graduating from high school this year don’t remember the Republicans ever being the adults in the room. Think on that.
To me, while Bricker used it the history for a more specific purpose, I read a lot of it being like two siblings caught fighting by their parents. There’s screeching about “who started it” and who did the worse thing in the lead up to the fight. Both are appealing to the electorate like they are the parent deciding who’s to blame/punish. I lean towards “both of you go to your rooms till you can learn to behave” on the state of politicizing SCOTUS nominations. Practically that’s not an option.
When I am King maybe I will do that in the window before I feel obligated to depose myself.
I like the age limit piece. I lean towards either much longer or no term limits in that amendment though. I really dislike the idea of judges potentially facing a decision on the career implications when considering a case. What exactly is the career path for a former Supreme who has to leave? Even stepping back to a lower federal court requires a confirmation vote. Will they be sitting in a County Courthouse hearing drunk driving cases? It seems wasteful. It also seems like it would exclude some great potential SCOTUS justices who will stay in lower court positions for career/financial reasons. There’s definitely room to work on the overall idea.
Why, specifically, is rejecting a qualified nominee by voting after being sure the vote will go the way you want it so dramatically better than simply not voting?
I thought the objection was that Garland was a moderate pick (Hatch approved) who was rejected as a naked exercise of power so utterly untethered to qualifications that they didn’t even bother to provide the fig leaf of a hearing.
