What’s a big deal is the Republicans’ selective memory…and how the only time they’re willing to ‘work together’ is when they’re in indisputable command. In other words, ‘work together with us when it’s what we want to do.’
Trivia question: Which President had more filibusters against his appointments than in the rest of American history combined?
It’s more cowardly to refuse to put your name on a vote. I also think it is against the spirit of the advise and consent duty laid out in the Constitution.
Eta: maybe I’m misremembering but I thought you were for them holding a vote so I assumed you would agree with my second point.
Sen Graham is perhaps the one Republican who doesn’t merit these attacks. He voted in favor of giving Advice and Consent to the nominations of Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor on the full Senate floor. He also sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and voted in committee in favor of both Kagan and Sotomayor. He was the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to have voted in this way.
That would be the Abe Fortas nomination to elevate him from Associate Justice to Chief Justice in 1968.
At the time of the Fortas nomination a two thirds vote (67 Senators) was required to invoke cloture.
Okay, do you not see the problem with this? “We will accept any nominee, as long as it is exactly this person who we know you would never normally nominate.”
Except they didn’t even say that. They said that Obama shouldn’t get to nominate anyone in his last year. They made their intentions and their words very clear.
Well, it’s in the Senate’s wheelhouse to reject any nominee for any reason. I’d personally like to see the vote made mandatory, i.e. the judiciary committee can recommend an up or down, but the nomination must be put to the entire Senate within 30 days, and each Senator’s vote put on record. I’m okay with not allowing a lame-duck president to nominate, but beyond that, fuck this “final year” bullshit.
And that makes a difference how? Obama was able to nominate someone and nothing the senate could have done would have changed that. Opposition party can say that the other side shouldn’t do XYZ till the cows come home, but they have no ability to stop that from happening. Right now Republican senators are saying the senate Democrats shouldn’t filibuster - they can say that all they want but the senate Democrats don’t have to listen. And back when Reid nuked the nomination filibuster, Republicans were saying that the senate Democrats shouldn’t do that either. And so it goes.
No doubt that’s how you’d see it. That’s how you see everything because you think you’re right about everything (annoyingly, I might add).
I say, “Democrats are employing the well worn rules, where the Republicans had to make up a reason to avoid the rules altogether and just not even hold hearings” - which is unequivocally true - and I only get gish-gallops full of your opinions and interpretation which cannot ever be challenged because you’re a lawyer.
I’m onto your tactics and I’m not rising to your bait. Go play superior with someone else.
And now I have to explain the difference to Bricker, Bone and HDitka, which they will never accept because I don’t know which page the cloture rules on in Roberts Rules of Order.
