A group of prominent conservatives have sent a letter to Republican senators urging them to filibuster President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court:
Our national experience in the past decade has changed the standard by which Republicans should cast their confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democrat president. The benefit of a doubt that once arguably might have justified the indifference over the last two nominees of a Democratic president is no longer tenable.
Huh. Actually, this obstructionist approach might not be a bad political strategy… if Republicans are resigned to remaining a minority party for the foreseeable future. But if they ever plan to win back both the trust of the American people, and/or the White House, well, not so much.
Because, you know, what goes around comes around, and all that.
It wasn’t so long ago, during the Alito nomination, that Republicans reviled Democratic talk of a filibuster as unAmerican and unconstitutional. This was during the heady days following the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2004 elections, a time when Karl Rove was boasting about a permanent Republican majority, and Senate leaders threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminating the filibuster altogether—should minority Democrats put up too strong a fight. They didn’t.
But if a mere 40 Republicans follow this letter’s advice, and do vote as a block to hold up the Sotomayor confirmation over issues of judicial philosophy, then the standard by which senators cast confirmation votes really will have changed. And it will be a standard by which Democrats will measure their own actions the next time a Republican president nominates a justice.
The letter argues that “Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts,” pointing to 2008 exit polls that showed three quarters of voters considered Supreme Court nominations a significant factor in their vote, and 7% the determining issue. But it might behoove the authors to remember that this was an election Obama won by a comfortable margin, capturing electoral votes in every region of the country, and one in which Democrats made substantial gains in the Senate, thus making the “stewardship” argument profoundly self-defeating to the conservative cause.
With Republican presidents having appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and one Republican-appointed Chief Justice after another having run the court for more than half a century, I understand if Republicans feel they have some sort of unique claim on the institution. But they don’t. Obama has just as much of a right to leave his imprint on the court as the presidents who preceded him.
So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come. And I’m guessing that cooler heads in the Republican caucus won’t.
I’m tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election. Somebody needs to stand up and say, “When you win the election, you pick the nominees. Until then, shut up! Just shut up! Just go away! Bury yourselves in your rat holes and don’t come out until you win an election. When you win an election, you can put all these socialist wackos, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, all over the court, but until then, SHUT UP! You are really irritating me.”
– Lush Limbaugh, July 5, 2005
So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come.
What’s really strange about the conservative reaction to Sotomayor’s nomination is that she’s not much of a liberal. Her judicial record is that of a restrained centrist. If the GOP wasn’t so hell-bent on self-destruction, they would have shut the hell up and saved themselves for when/if President Obama appoints an actual liberal. As it is, they’ve ruined any residual credibility they may have had.
I guess they just can’t help themselves. Scorpions, and all…
You mean, if we have an actual leader as majority leader, rather than Harry Reid. I don’t know why Democratic Senators continue to elect leaders from states where the seats are not safe. Stupid.
“Cooler heads”
Ha ha! Goldy, you have a sharp wit.
This whole debate by the wingnuts is amazingly stupid, and I hope it continues.
At best Sotomayor will be a slightly stronger voice and more progressive thinker than Souter. She will not remake the court.
Under Rehnquist and Roberts, this is the most activist court we have ever seen. True conservatives would see that, but tese are wingnuts, not Burkeans. This court attacks federal agencies, federal laws and they invent new coerporate protections that never existed in statute or common law. They have done so at a record shattering rate. The wingnuts don’t object to that.
Now they will raise a stink over a moderate progressive and piss off every independent minded Hispanic and Woman voter in the country. Lets see, we can count the number of states with Repub Seantors and significant hispanic votes, and its a alot. Fla, Texas, AZ, NC,.. As for women, well, I think they are now about 52% of the population.
So go to it wingnuts. Pretty soon we will have a majority that can send amendments to the states to the Constitution, without your help. And that even scares me.
Good article in the New Yorker from Jeffrey Toobin. (h/t L, G, and M)
We know that no matter WHO PRESIDENT OBAMA nominated the bat-shit crazy wing of the GOP would have attacked. I say – let the bitches try to stop the nomination. We should just change the rules so a simple majority can end the filibuster and move on. There’s nothing the Publicans can do about it. They’re impotent. Fuck em.
The nominee put forward by President Obama is a direct result of the election. Those who were informed and understood the consequences of the 2008 election knew this was coming.
IMO to bitch about it now is pathetic. Fruitless really. Again IMO if Senate Republicans want to impress conservatives, do a complete job throughout the confirmation process. Be specific about issues she has ruled on in the past, ask her to explain how those rulings and her judicial philosophy align with her public statements. Ask her to go on the record publicly with her views.
Then baring any issues (There aren’t any) vote to put her on the court….
If it was unAmerican and unconstitutional then, it still is.
@8 A Democratic president’s SCOTUS nominee isn’t a batshit crazy wingnut. Who wudda thunk?
Rog – We just got word from our mole that the BIAW has got a war chest of $4.6 million to go after Barbara Madsen next year!!! The BIAW Rog!
Rally the troops. They might select Groen, or S. Johnson as their figurehead. We’ve GOT to keep Madsen on that bench (as you well know).
Go get ’em . . . BIAW . . . . BIAW . . …
god, I wish.
8
Well-stated. Sotomayor is getting a lifetime appointment; the Senate confirmation process should be a thoroughgoing vetting so that no surprises might come up while she’s on the bench. But, to try to derail her confirmation just because Obama selected her would show how ideologically rigid and marginalized the GOP leadership is.
Unless one is delusional, Sotomayer is a racist, pure & simple, as are all members of the treasonous La Raza by definition- since their motto is “For our race everything- for others, nothing”.
Her record is nothing to shout about either, and frankly -if you’ve heard her speak- she’s not what you’d call a towering intellectual.
Eric Holder has some racial hangups and agenda too, calling us “cowards” regarding racial issues and letting-off Black Panthers who stood in front of a polling place with nightsticks.
And Obama himself has shown us a puzzling pro-Kenyan grudge against the British and has said some pretty odd things, even regarding his own grandmother… plus he’s the one who nominated all these kooks in the first place.
Whatever happened to the idea of a colorblind society? Team Obama define their world in racial terms all the time- and unlike any white people I know. I wouldn’t want to be judged by any of them after what I’ve heard come out of their own mouths- they sound like Jesse Jackson.
If Obama is going to go on with his “justice” agenda largely based upon race- the double standards need to stop… and NOW