Aw shit.
Things are goin’ down.
I guess I don’t understand the strategy here. I don’t like Gorsuch and I agree that the GOP screwed the Dems out of the appointment, but what’s the endgame for fillibuster on this? Are they going to fillibuster until the next election? Do they think the next appointee the GOP will put up will be less conservative?
I got a strategy for you:
“Fuck 'em. Fuck all of 'em. In the ear, in the nose, wherever. Fuck everything about them. They get nothing.”
To be fair to the dems, they put up a very center-left candidate. The White-house put forward likely the most conservative judge they could find. (however qualified)
Right. I get the “Fuck 'em all” sentiment and I understand the complaint about Gorsuch versus Garland and how it should’ve been Garland under Obama. I totally sympathize and agree. If you look through the thread, I’ve been pretty anti-Gorsuch.
That said, I don’t understand the Dems’ strategy.
- Block Gorsuch
- ???
Where do they think this will lead? It’s surely not going to get them a less conservative nominee the next go-around.
Showing your supporters that you might have something spine-like when the planets align perfectly once every few administrations is also useful.
If things are coming to a head and we’re about to start cleaning house on the Executive it seems reasonable to delay (not saying this is the case, but it has not been a great week for the WH), if only for the small chance Republicans become scared about losing their seats in 2018 from the fallout and put up a less awful candidate.
What are the odds president Pence puts up a less awful candidate? Not good, I think.
Part of the endgame is to avoid getting primaried to hell- the Bernie folks are making enough headway in local Dem circles now that they’re getting a little scared. Second reason is because they don’t think the Senate will go nuclear- because the Republicans could lose the Senate in 4 years at this rate- and then the Dems could do some real crazy things like stack the courts and then pass a bunch of radical legislation.
I don’t think the Republicans will go nuclear because of the risks involved. The only downside to this is you lose the moral superiority- but that means jack these days.
The time to do that was last year and they didn’t. They should have found a way to bring work to a halt until Garland got a hearing. Filibustering Gorsuch to get republicans to invoke the nuclear option is petty and stupid.
Yes, this is not going to work well. This is a mistake of epic proportions.
It will also distract from the fact that Trump is likely a criminal.
That’s really my complaint. This isn’t going to help me at all. They fillibuster, GOP goes nuclear, then what? Oh yeah, the the next nominee is even less palatable and he’ll be sitting on the Court for a couple of decades.
Yeah, for sure. I think that they need to take an L on this one. The Nuclear option is really bad, and I think that the GOP has said they will use it if necessary. Which is bad. But, Gorsuch is better than Scalia… so it is not a complete loss.
There’s also the notion that justices are supposed to be picked based on qualifications, not based on whether you think they agree with you politically.
I realize that this is naive at this point, but whatever.
Yeah, I may not like how conservative he is, and I fundamentally disagree with the literalist philosophy, but at least he’s qualified. Unlike, you know, the president.
Or the Sec of Education. Or the Sec of State. Or basically everyone in his entire administration with the exception of his Sec of Defense.
There might be some truth to this. It’s possible that Schumer & Co. are seeing something coming down the pike that we don’t. And although I don’t see an outcome to this that doesn’t end up with an ultra-conservative in the White House (Trump → Pense - > Ryan → Hatch → Tillerson), the Democrats are smelling blood in the water and don’t want to hand Trump ANY victory before whatever is coming goes down.
Yeah, it is possible that the GOP might turn on Trump and decide to about face on things, and dump all of the Trump stuff, including this nominee, especially if the Russia stuff gets worse. So, they know that they will only have to filibuster for a week or two before something happens and they can renegotiate.
Also, I really do understand Gorsuch’s ideology, “We enforce the laws, we don’t make up for poorly written ones” as a way of saying, the legislators need to do their jobs better, but, I cannot agree with that logic. The judges should be able to correct situations, if not fix entirely, to match the intent of the law, if not the literal content of the words on the page.
If that happens, it happens, but I don’t think that is the intent. Haven’t they been saying for weeks they would do this?
The slow-rolling nature of the process has nonetheless masked the extraordinary new standard Mr. Schumer is setting, and the damage to the Constitution. He’s saying that every Supreme Court nominee will now require 60 votes to be confirmed. This is a massive shift—a break with the Founders’ vision of advice and consent, and an affront to two centuries of Senate history. It’s a declaration that Democrats will permanently wield the judicial filibuster as a political weapon, robbing the president and the Senate majority of the ability to appoint, and stripping the Supreme Court of a full complement of justices.
Uh
Never in U.S. history have we had a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. In 1968 a bipartisan group of senators filibustered the proposed elevation of Justice Abe Fortas to chief justice, because he was a crook. The left edged nearer the precipice in 2006 with the attempted filibuster of Samuel Alito, but only 25 Democrats joined.
Since then, progressives have lost any fear of the electoral consequences of playing abject politics with the high court.
Uh
0xFFFFFFFFFF BUFFER OVERRUN
reboot irony subsystem?