Some Dem with a sense of humor could filibuster it, though. 
Geography and math are not necessarily working against Donald Trump the way everyone has been insisting. However, geography and math are most definitely working against the idea of a united republican party. Trump’s campaign has exposed this. Trump is moving to the center and will be more competitive against Hillary Clinton than people assume, with or without the conventional trappings of the republican party. It is the republican party, which is increasingly unable to unite the tea party, the evangelicals, and Wall St, which has a major problem on its hands.
And that would be the right move, as democrats would be seen as politicizing the court in the same way republicans are now. The democrats benefit by exposing the republicans, and their rotting carcass of a political party, for what they are: a bunch of do-nothing, anti-innovation obstructionists, who can’t even agree with the president even when the president is willing to at least partially agree with their own ideas. I doubt the republicans will reverse course anyway. It’s not in their DNA to backtrack on something like this. You’ll probably see more and more individual senators fearing for their lives in tight races in swing states come out and ask the party to reconsider, but something tells me that we can TrusTED to fuck up the spirit of a good compromise once again.
But he isn’t. I don’t think he’s capable of moving to the center, which to him is a boring spot where people say things designed not to alienate or arouse or admonish.
No, they always back down. Look at all the other attempts at shutting down the government. It’s still unlikely that they’ll do anything before the election (mostly because nobody is paying any real attention), but a weird possibility is that the Senate will feel they have to vote on Garland just so they show the Republican Party as being “not-Trump.”
Even if Obama and Garland aren’t planning to walk away, it would be a good idea for Garland to grumble a bit about how being stuck in limbo is interfering with his current job (i.e. DC Appeals Court Judge Garland having to recuse himself from cases likely to end up in front of Supreme Court Justice Garland), thereby cranking up the heat a bit.
Before Clinton takes office, it’s still only Obama who can pull the nomination. I do expect he would consult with her, though.
If the Democrats take the Senate as well as the presidency? President Obama should wait for the Senate Republicans to cave on their transparent “we should wait for the next [Republican] president as a matter of principle” stance as they scramble to confirm Garland before Clinton and the new senators take office, and then “help” them stick to their principles by withdrawing the nomination. If the Republican leadership do the smart thing and avoid the obvious trap, Obama should pull the nomination sometime in January and let Clinton do as she pleases, unless she indicates to him privately that she wants to go forward with Garland. Doing so, he would weaken any criticism of Clinton for pulling the nomination herself. President Obama should also resist the temptation to say, “up yours, McConnell” as he pulls the nomination.
Trump’s various policy–I shouldn’t call them proposals–policy flights of fancy have never been particularly conservative. Trump can’t “run to the center” because his problem isn’t that he’s an extreme right-wing conservative, his problem is that he’s an arrogant thin-skinned crybaby blowhard. His supporters don’t give a shit about his policy proposals other than: fuck the Mexicans, fuck the Chinese, fuck the Muslims. And his specific ideas on how to fuck them aren’t important to his supporters, what’s important is that he talks about how he’s going to fuck them.
Can Trump stop acting like a 2 year old that just shit his pants and is now smearing that shit on every surface? No he can’t, because he’s Donald Trump. There is no “center”. That’s nonsensical.
He’s running, not to “the center”, but in the direction of the latest shift of the political winds. It should be pretty easy to pin the flip-flopper label on “Don the Con”.
I don’t think he’d have to recuse himself from “cases likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court.” Every case he handles has the potential to end up at the Supreme Court. Once he gets the SCOTUS gig, he might have to recuse himself from cases he worked on below, but not the other way around.
I don’t see the Republicans accepting the nomination before the election if at all. To do so they would have to go against their nature in a number of ways.
-
They would have to admit that their initial stated reasons for not hearing any Obama nominee were BS, which would confirm publicly that they are far more interested in politics than they are in being truthful.
-
The only reason to do this is practical rather than ideological grounds, and thus far the Republicans have shown no interest in taking practicality over ideology. Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered repealing Obamacare 60 times. While they may admit that he is better than they are likely to get from Hillary they can’t come out and say that he is anything but a compromise choice after they argued so voraciously about his supposed anti-gun stance, and compromise doesn’t sell these days.
-
Even if they decide to argue on practical lines, the Republicans would have to admit that Trump has no chance of beating Hillary in the National election. Admitting that the Republican candidate is dead in the water would possibly dispel the illusion that Conservatives represent the silent majority of Americans. So even though they may or may not support/endorse his candidacy they still need to stick to the idea that the polls need to be unskewed and that Trump has a real chance at the presidency.
After the election, assuming Hillary wins, there is a chance that they will try to cut their losses and quickly accept Obama’s nomination, but at that point I think Obama could withdraw it without the Democrats suffering political consequences, based on the fact that at that point circumstances really will have changed.
Assume that by early September the polls have settled into a decent and stable Clinton +5ish and looking probable for Democratic control of the Senate, which I think is most likely to be the case by then.
How Obama should play it at that point (and I’ve said this before) is state that he submitted a nominee as was his duty and tried his best to get the Senate to do their job to either approve or reject the nominee. “It’s now been over half a year of the GOP Senate refusing to do their job to give this moderate and extremely well qualified nominee a hearing. Waiting more than half a year for them to do their job would be absurd. I am announcing today that unless hearings are held beginning within the week I will defer to the Senate’s expressed wishes and withdraw the nominee deferring to the next President, whoever she may be, to nominate a potential new Supreme Court Justice. Thank you.”
Force their decision in the immediate run up to the election. Whatever the response it will further divide them and not divide any of the Democratic side.
The best I’ve heard is: “Trump doesn’t have a policy. He has a slogan.”
You are crazy. The Republican leadership is so delusional that if Obama withdrew his nomination for any reason that is a victory - especially if he phased it as giving into the Pubs. Hell, they’d gladly let President Sanders appoint a new justice if it meant Obama did not.
The best tack to take is for President Clinton to say on Jan 20th that her SC nominee is Merrick Garland.
I would assume then, that social issues rather than economic ones matter to you. On economics, he’s a Republican, or might as well be. That’s why the GOP like him so much. I, too would prefer Garland to a Republican nominee, because an actual Republican nominee would probably be an asshole on social issues as well as economic issues. But right now, it’s the economic issues that really matter. My best hope is that Sanders wins the Presidential nomination and persuades Obama to withdraw Garland’s nomination so Bernie can appoint a REAL Democrat to the court. My second best hope is that the same thing happens with Hillary. I will grant you these are both extremely slender threads to hang one’s hopes on.
The only Republican that needs to be convinced it McConnell, and he doesn’t go for re-election until 2020. Maybe we can tip him over onto his back or something
and tickle his tummy like a big ol’housecat?
Well, you’ve gotta take into account that this call is coming from those bunch of liberal-loving lame-stream media RINO’s at Redstate.
(sarcasm off)
I don’t see this as an issue at all. It seems more and more common to be presented with obvious lies and/or contradictions, with a pretense that they are uncontrovertible eternal facts. Then just repeat the lie, and do whatever the hell you want. Just cite some BS “changed circumstances.” Or flat out deny that you said what everyone has tape of you having said.
I’m sure both parties do it. Given my sentiments, I’m likely more sensitive to it when the Repubs do it. And I’m sure it has always been done. But ISTM that it is becoming more common and being done more brashly in recent years.
So it is an interesting choice for a conservative. 2 options:
-Garland, who is pretty moderate and definitely qualified;
-Clinton wins and either sticks with Garland or nominates somone younger and lefter;
-Trump wins, and who knows WHO the hell he’ll nominate! Could be a non-lawyer. No reason to believe he’d have an anti-abortion litmus test. Would probably be pro-business. Could be his daughter…
Given those 3 possibilities, I could see a darned good case being made that the Repubs’ best move is to go w/ Garland.
Sure, but the thing about obvious lies is that they’re…obvious lies. I’m sure McConnell will come up with some hand-waving excuse, but no one will believe it. The actual message that will be sent, and received by voters is that the GOP would now rather take an Obama pick than whomever they think the next Prez will pick, presumably because they think the next Prez will be Hillary.
Wrong “critter-on-its-back” metaphor.