6 ms·
It was a new rule, concocted at a moments notice, and discarded the moment it outlived its usefulness. That latter moment was today. It was the definition of ab
by blake1 6y ago
It was a new rule, concocted at a moments notice, and discarded the moment it outlived its usefulness. That latter moment was today. It was the definition of abuse.
- beervirus 6y agoPlease tell me the last time a democrat-controlled senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice for a republican president in an election year.
- nwienert 6y agoYou are right, and shouldn’t be downvoted for pointing out a simple truth. People are upset because the media played it up as such a miscarriage of justice, but the truth is the senate wouldn’t have confirmed him and so they didn’t vote for a hearing. The Democrats of course can and obviously will do the same the next time they have opposition in the senate - and would have done the same, I’d bet, if the situation was flipped then. I actually think many don’t understand this as it was really propagandized on Twitter, etc as some massive deal, but having the hearing wouldn’t have changed anything.
- bcrosby95 6y ago> but the truth is the senate wouldn’t have confirmed him and so they didn’t vote for a hearing. This is not necessarily true. McConnell does this to protect his fellow senators from having to decide between party and state, potentially hurting their re-election chances if they side with the party. Majority leaders regularly stop things going to vote not because they wouldn't pass, but rather because it can create strife and bad feelings within the party.
- nwienert 6y agoHas an opposition senate ever elected a Supreme Court nominee in an election year?
- kemayo 6y agoAnthony Kennedy, a Reagan nominee, was confirmed by a Democratic Senate in 1988.
- nwienert 6y agoAnthony Kennedy was nominated in 1987. The spot was vacant for 18 months. Dems unanimously confirmed him.
- jonwithoutanh 6y agoNominated in November 1987 and confirmed in February 1988. The spot wasn't vacant for 18 months once a reasonable candidate was nominated.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoI'm not sure this is really as relevant a question as whether an opposition senate has ever blocked a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. I don't have the answer to that, but it appears the last time a Democratic president made a Supreme Court appointment while Republicans held the Senate was in 1895, whereas the last time the reverse happened was 1987. So while we may not be able to say "the Democrats clearly wouldn't have done the same thing McConnell did" with surety, I don't think we can say that they clearly would have, either.
- nwienert 6y ago1987 wasnt the final year of the presidency.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoYes, i know. Neither was 1895. That was kind of my point. Let me try to frame this a hopefully better way. People keep trying to argue that McConnell isn't being a hypocrite, he's just following precedent. But for that to be true, we need to (a) find a time before 2016 when the Senate prevented a Supreme Court nominee from even getting a vote on the Senate floor in an election year, and (b) the Senate needs to specifically cite the upcoming election as a reason. So far, no one seems to be able to point to that supposedly precedent-setting case. And that's before we throw in McConnell's new claim as of yesterday that such a precedent only applies when the Senate majority and the President are from two different parties, a condition which, it's worth noting, was never mentioned by him or any of his supporters in 2016. In strictly legal terms, McConnell gets to do what he wants. But the claim that he was following some previously established norm by denying Garland a vote in 2016 but not denying a new nominee a vote in 2020 is simply a lie. And that was my point.
- anemoiac 6y agoSure, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed Reagan's appointment of Anthony Kennedy in 1988.
- rayiner 6y agoExcept the vacancy opened up in 1987, not an election year, and it was Reagan's third attempt to appoint someone to that seat.
- anemoiac 6y agoI was responding to the request, "Please tell me the last time a democrat-controlled senate confirmed a Supreme Court justice for a republican president in an election year." If you're trying to be thorough, though, you should probably mention that Reagan's first selection for that seat was controversial because of his involvement in the the post-Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre," as well as the general suspicion that he would try to reverse Roe v. Wade and other civil rights-related rulings of preceding decades. Reagan's second selection withdrew his name from consideration before even being nominated, so I'm not sure why he's even relevant here. I get that you're trying to make a political point, but there's simply no evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell's GOP (perhaps more aptly described as the post-Gingrich GOP) did in 2016.
- rayiner 6y agoDemocrats blocked Bork for an article he wrote 25 years before, which raised the libertarian argument of whether Congress should be able to regulate racial discrimination by private parties. It is to this day a challenging topic for even liberal libertarians, because those laws rest on a sweeping interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. But Democrats used that article to defame Bork as a segregationist. The second nominee withdraw his nomination after it came out he used marijuana, after what happened to Bork. So yes, Democrats were not in a position to play that cars a third time against a wildly popular sitting President. There is ample evidence that Democrats would have behaved like McConnell did. For example, their threats to pack the Supreme Court in 2019. (After their threats to pack the Supreme Court under FDR gutted large parts of the constitution.) The fact is that Democrats don’t perceive conservatives as legitimate players in the political process. That’s why they continually raise alarm about conservative Supreme Court nominees, even though in 40 years of a conservative majority on the court, not a single major liberal precedent has been overturned.