Yes, but it will make it easier (and more likely) for the filibuster to be eliminated in the future.
Out of curiosity, is there any confident prediction or set of confident predictions you make that, if they fail to materialize, will make you say to yourself, “Huh. Perhaps my prognostication skills are not as strong as I once believed,” and thereafter hold back on making additional confident predictions?
Didn’t you say, before Trump got elected, that a Republican would in all likelihood never win the White House again?
I’m sure they’d just eliminate the applicability of the filibuster to SCOTUS nominations.
However, once both parties have each taken a turn at cutting back on the applicability of the filibuster, the citizenry isn’t exactly going to rise up in anger and astonishment when one party or the other finally gets rid of it entirely.
I’m sure pearl-clutchers like Fred Hiatt and Ruth Marcus of the WaPo will be very upset, and whichever party is in the minority when the filibuster finally goes will present a public posture of outrage. But its effect on the next election will be so immeasurable that nobody will bother to measure it.
Can you recall what you were saying about Trump and his chances of winning the primary and then the general election? Is it my imagination, or did most of the Republicans on this board reassure everyone during both elections that Trump was an undesirable joke and didn’t have a chance of winning?
Nobody expected the Comey intervention.
I didn’t appreciate his comments in oral arguments, myself. I don’t think he’s a reliable vote mostly because his judicial reasoning seems outcome based. Sure he voted with the majority in Heller and McDonald so that’s better than the liberal four, but only just so. I would have preferred a nominee with a stronger observable record, like Sykes. Sykes would have been my top pick.
More props to this. Comedy gold.
Booker?
Gorsuch & Hardiman both seem OK, and they should be questioned rigorously, but no stalemate/filibuster. Wait for a really bad nominee.
This is like saying that Goliath lost to David because the Sun was in Goliath’s eyes, or that Michigan lost to Appalachian State because of poor officiating.
Hillary was supposed to *clobber *Trump. She was vastly more experienced, more competent, qualified, had the political machinery, 57 newspaper endorsements to Trump’s 2, a much greater war chest of campaign funding. Two years ago just about anyone, if presented with a Hillary vs. Trump hypothetical matchup, would have picked Clinton as the easy landslide win. She herself asked in a debate why she wasn’t leading Trump by 50 percentage points.
The one thing I hate is the appellation of “liberal” Supreme Court Justice. There aren’t any. Sonia may stray into the “moderate” area but they are all conservative by nature. President Obama got slapped down on more than a few votes 9-0. In a recent year (2014), a 2/3rds majority of decisions were 9-0. The “great divide” is only in evidence on a few hot button issues that the two parties highlight to their partisans. And it’s these issues that keep bubbling up through the courts as the proponents of the individual positions tinker with language, trying to hide or obfuscate intent to overturn or change a previously blocked initiative.
I’ll reserve judgement on Agent Orange’s choice when the record has been explored.
This presupposes that everything Obama went to court for was a liberal cause. There’s nothing liberal about trying to make a sneaky recess appointment.
According to this graph chart here on 538, Sotomayor and Ginsburg are the left-most justices, getting minus-0.5 scores on the spectrum (making them as liberal as Gorsuch is conservative,) and five out of the current eight justices are to the ***left ***of the median dividing line, meaning that, overall, the SCOTUS is more liberal than conservative.
As an indy, I hope the democrats go hardcore on this nomination. Methinks the Republicans are going to go nuclear - it is just a question of when. So, to rollover on this one doesn’t gain anything. Honestly, I can’t conceive of a scenario where the Trumpster says “Dems allowed my first nominee, so I’ll put a more moderate up for the second nomination.”
Personally, I like straight battle lines with a bully. Don’t delude oneself that “next time it will be different”. Draw a line in the sand this time, and then it is crystal clear what the result is.
By liberal, we mean outcome oriented rather than following a strict interpretation of the law. Which is why we more often use the term “activist”.
Let’s just hope that Prez Trump doesn’t think people are talking about literally going nuclear, and gives the launch directive. Could get messy in DC around the Capitol Building…
It’s looking more and more like nukes will have to fly. The Republicans are NOT going to let this nomination die, but there aren’t enough Dems to support it.
While I hope you’re right, I think there’s still a decent chance that there are enough spineless Democratic Senators who would vote for cloture, even if they vote against confirmation.
I think it all depends on if Democrats want to kill the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Since they purposely left the filibuster in place only for SCOTUS nominees, they must have had a reason to want to keep it. Probably to save it for a Bork type.
If so, I think that’s very foolish reasoning – the chances of Republicans not eliminating the filibuster, were it to be used or threatened, even for an “extreme” nominee, is almost nil, IMO.
There’s an easy compromise here: he could nominate Merrick Garland. If he’s not going to do that, I see no reason for Dems to continue their “Compromise means we give something and get nothing” strategy that’s worked so poorly for them.