My days of assuming politicians will get punished by their constituents for poor behavior are long over. It’s pretty much “live boy or dead girl” these days, and even that isn’t a guarantee of an election loss.
According to wiki when Sotomayor and Kagan where confirmed there were 40+ Republicans in the Senate. So are you saying that they are on the bench illegally? If so then they should be removed.
Sure. There’s equivalency and there is also false equivalency.
All this talk though. Doesn’t it mean anything? Are we supposed to let McConnell off the hook in the future by erasing all the tapes of his threats…basically to disenfranchise everyone who voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama, not to mention any R who thinks the process should just move on?
The Supreme court is the main lasting effect that a POTUS has. This is a big deal, and a big deal to flout.
So, let me see if I get this right. Let’s say one of the pillars of the left wing on the SCOTUS dies when GW is in his last year. GW then wants to nominate a ‘moderate’ (to him)…and that would be cool with you guys? You figure the Dems in Congress should play along and not stall in the hopes that, oh, say Obama will be elected in the next term? You’d all be up in arms if that were the case?
Personally, I can see the (conservative) Republicans point on this. Clearly even a moderate choice is going to unbalance the current makeup and they are desperate to stall long enough to even have a shot at maintaining that balance. To be sure, if the shoe were on the other foot then it would be the (conservative) Republicans screaming that Congress was blocking Bush (or whoever) from doing his or her elected duty to nominate and get a new justice sworn in…and it would be the Dems who would be cool with delaying tactics to push this off on, hopefully, their elected candidate in the new term. In this case, yeah…both sides would play this the same. And many in this and other threads who are pissed off at the Republicans for doing this (though so far they haven’t done anything) would be yammering for the Dems to do the same thing, and supporting them doing it by making any and all excuses that it should wait on the next president.
Personally, I’m totally good with Obama nominating a candidate, and would probably be good with whoever he does nominate as long as he or she isn’t too left wing radical, but I can completely see why the Republicans are freaking out over this. Not that it’s going to do them any good in the end, since Hillary is going to be elected president and they can’t stall forever. There IS no ‘long game’ for the GOP in the event Hillary is elected…if and when that happens they are fucked, and the best they can do is push for a moderate choice. But even a moderate choice, for them, would be a disaster. As a moderate choice for the left wing liberal types would be a disaster to replace one of their justices.
Bone - that’s a fair point that this is somewhat speculative until a nomination is made. It does appear that Republicans will actually carry out what they are threatening, which is clearly an escalation of the politics around judicial appointments.
The fact that politics is played with nominations simply does not mean that both sides are the same. A push poll aiming to make voters think that some candidate is weak on defense is not nearly in the same league as a push poll that makes voters think that John McCain had an illegitimate black child - yet both are examples of politics, right?
Shodan is making a patently outrageous statement that everything done within the context of “politics” is indistinguishable from any other action. Everyone who has even a shred of perspective should surely realize where this will leave us: escalation of political threats will be perpetually justified, no matter how outrageous the demands. In this universe, there’s no difference between generally respected figures like JFK and Everett Dirksen, on one hand; and Joe McCarthy and Alan Grayson, on the other hand. It’s all politics, right?
The least the sane voices can do is drown out with our boos the purile ideas put forth, mostly by extremists, that every disagreement in political philosophy is a life-or-death challenge to the future of this country, which requires a response more in line with political nuclear war instead of negotiation and sometimes compromise.
Speaking for myself, I would not be up in arms. If it was a justice like Roberts, a guy I am pretty impressed with even though I don’t agree with his political philosophy, I would very likely support the nomination, while regretting that the Dems didn’t win the last presidential election in order to choose someone even better.
I see this viewpoint as being neither moderate, liberal or conservative. I call it “being an adult with a little bit of integrity.”
I have to say that I’m not a big fan of the “comparing my hypothetical to your actual shows that both sides are the same” approach without at least some evidence. What have you got?
Hehehehe. You sound like the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, most of the 50 states Governorships, and most of the state legislatures.
“Tis but a scratch.” “Had worse.” “It’s just a flesh wound!” “I’m invincible!”
- the Black Knight
“You’re a looney.” - King Authur
“All right, we’ll call it a draw.”
-the Black Knight
Until Obama actually names a nominee, these conversations are all a moo point.
(Yeah, like a cow’s opinion. It just doesn’t matter.
- Joey Tribiani)
Agreed - except I’m not as sure that Republicans will carry out their threats.
Even if they just confirmed after meeting that it is exactly what they will do?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/politics/joe-biden-supreme-court-senate-republicans/index.html
Do you really think this is an idle threat? They sound pretty sure to me.
You keep on taking out those contexts one at a time, someday I’m sure you won’t regret it 
Since it’s such a low probability event (one of the pillars of either left or right wing thinking on the SC dying or leaving suddenly late in the second term of a president from the opposite side) it’s going to be speculation. I suppose we can wait to see if a Republican is elected in the next election (very low probability) and one of the left wing SCJs shuffle off late in the second term and see what the reaction would be…but I think that it’s pretty easy to see that it would be the same, simply from the other sides perspective. Do you have any evidence that, in the past, the Dems have been less strident on getting what they want wrt the SC? I haven’t noticed that…nor have I noticed any indication that left leaning 'dopers would be good with a right wing conservative president nominating a right wing (or even ‘moderate’ to them) replacement for one of the left leaning SCJs. To me, this is pot and kettle, but if you think it’s not then that’s fine.
I would too. But then you and I aren’t the ones who this is upsetting. I think you would be less sanguine than I would be if, say, it were GW (or Trump or Cruz) who, late in their term was the one who’d be nominating someone, but whether you’d be ok with that or not there are certainly a lot of 'dopers who wouldn’t be if the shoe was on the other foot.
Politics are such a lovely thing. 
I don’t know. I am not confident enough to make a wager on it. I fully expect a filibuster, but whether or not there will be a hearing at all…I think it’s a toss up. If I had to make a prediction that will later be proved wrong, I would lean towards there being a hearing before Obama’s term is up. I have no evidence to support this.
I’m not surprised at the political stances – of course the Republicans don’t want Obama to get to replace Scalia. I’m surprised that they’re so blatantly political about it. Why announce it all in advance, rather than just saying “we’ll carefully consider any nominee the President puts forward” while deciding behind the scenes to vote down any nominee?
Because they are stupid (well, because they think it will gain them something with their base I guess…and their base is stupid or at least ignorant).
The prime difference here is that the Republicans are saying that they won’t approve anybody. Sure, I can see the Democrats blocking a candidate they felt was unacceptable for political reasons just as I can see the Republicans doing the same - that’s politics as usual. What I can’t see - and this is an indication of how bad things have become - is the Democrats doing what the GOP are doing right now and saying “It doesn’t matter who you nominate; we’re going to block him or her”. They’re saying that no candidate is acceptable simply because they don’t like the guy doing the nominating. That’s not “politics as usual”; that’s petty-minded obstructionism of the sort that has been damaging the country since the GOP took over the House in 2010.
For the base.
Compromising now on a moderate Scalia replacement now seems like a better strategy than going all in and banking on a Republican win in November. Not to mention that the Republican might be named Trump, and there is no telling who the hell he would decide to nominate. So, the Republican party has well under a 50% chance of having much of a say in the nominee post Obama.
Unless one considers that each senator is actually only in it for him or herself to get reelected and couldn’t care less about the long term game of the party (not to mention the country), in which case, screaming “Hell no!” about any Obama nominee is likely the correct strategy.
That’s a fair point, though in reality what it indicates is that the Dems, at least, aren’t completely stupid. They would SAY they are considering the nomination but basically would block anyone not acceptable…which, if this was one of their stalwarts would pretty much be anyone who wasn’t person of similar philosophy to who they lost. Anything else would unbalance the court in their opinion (which is exactly what the Republicans would want in this case).
Of course, so far all of this is speculation. The Republicans have (stupidly IMHO) SAID they would block whoever and won’t even consider them, but afaik Obama has yet to actually make a nomination so we don’t really know. We shall see if they really are stupid enough to not even go through the motions, which, I think, will hurt them in the long run with anyone who isn’t their base.
Oh sure - I’m old enough to remember Robert Bork. But let’s not underestimate how dogmatic and stupid the current GOP Congress is. The GOP-controlled House shut down the country rather than give an inch; one hopes that the GOP Senate is sensible enough to be pragmatic but I see no evidence of it, particularly as McConnell and co are doubling down on the “no confirmations before the election” stance.