War: Senate Democrats Prepare To Filibuster Trump's SCOTUS Pick No Matter What

[Tom B]

Blue Wall Cracking: More Democratic Senators Signal Opposition to SCOTUS Filibuster
Guy Benson
1/31/2017 5:05:00 PM - Guy Benson


In case you hadn't noticed, the Democratic Party's left flank is running around with its hair ablaze, reflexively opposing virtually all things Trump. As is so often the case, they're escalating partisan tensions by pioneering and expanding new methods of obstructionism, then squealing like stuck pigs when Republicans retaliate in kind. Given the party base's political blood lust, many Democrats are frantically feeding the beast. But not everyone is on board with this across-the-board, scorched-earth approach. Matt wrote earlier about a new statement from Delaware Senator Chris Coons, who admitted several weeks ago that he suddenly regrets going along with Harry Reid's 'nuclear option' on the filibuster. Having been burned by his own partisan zeal, Coons has decided not to join the voices in his caucus clamoring for yet another escalation. He's not alone. Three Democrats who are up for re-election in Trump-dominated states next year have announced that they will not join the promised filibuster (see update) attempt against the president's Supreme Court nominee:


John McCormack @McCormackJohn
Manchin on SCOTUS: "I'm not going to filibuster anybody."

Claire McCaskill

✔@clairecmc
We should have a full confirmation hearing process and a vote on ANY nominee for the Supreme Court.

11:06 AM - 31 Jan 2017


Guy Benson

✔@guypbenson
Heitkamp (D-ND): Trump SCOTUS pick "absolutely" deserves up-or-down vote.http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-supreme-court-democrats-strategy-234441 …

12:14 PM - 31 Jan 2017

Dems struggle over SCOTUS opposition strategy
A survey of Democratic members shows the wide range of opinions within the caucus.

politico.com
Manchin, Heitkamp and McCaskill have undoubtedly seen the polling in their respective states, and the Missourian is surely aware of her on-the-record stance that could be used against her back home if she flip-flops so abruptly. Presuming that every Republican rallies behind Trump's SCOTUS selection -- and both finalists are quite well-regarded within conservative legal circles -- Mitch McConnell may already have 56 votes toward breaking a filibuster. Will other Democratic Senators from states where Trump won in a romp follow suit? Comments from Jon Tester of Montana ("have a hearing and a vote") may swell the list to 57. Coons' stance, along with the more predictable defections, also suggests that it's not just deeply vulnerable Democrats who aren't convinced that goading the GOP to follow through on the Reid Rule and the Kaine Compact by finishing off the judicial filibuster is a good move. Politico reports that Chuck Schumer's caucus is divided over strategy:

The Democratic Party is splintering over its strategy for handling President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, with liberals upset that Senate Democrats aren’t taking a harder line and moderates fretting about appearing too obstructive. In the middle is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who's facing one of the biggest moments in his career. Battles over Supreme Court nominees are epic struggles between the parties, and emotions are running hotter than normal this time around after Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland from even getting a hearing for almost all of last year...Schumer, for his part, has repeatedly said he will fight any nomination that isn't "mainstream," declining to match McConnell's strategy of a unilateral blockade so early in the process. A survey of Democratic members shows the wide range of opinions within the caucus.


CNN has a similar story up today. It'll be hard for Schumer to make the "not mainstream" case (we know that he deliberately abuses the term "extreme," by his own admissions), given that Neil Gorsuch was breezily confirmed by voice vote in 2006. And on the off-chance that it's Hardiman, he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. My hunch is that Schumer the tactician would prefer to hold his fire and preserve the filibuster option for a potential second vacancy (for which Team Trump has a plan of its own), but the hard Left appears to have little appetite for pragmatism at the moment. But some Senators may prioritize their own survival over the fleeting fury of the national grassroots. UPDATE: I'll leave you with a caution from WaPo's Dave Weigel on what Coons and McCaskill may be counting as a "vote," followed by a clarification from McCaskill:


Dave Weigel

✔@daveweigel
People are rusty and not asking if they’re counting a cloture vote as a vote! https://twitter.com/guypbenson/status/826521392212500480 …

12:04 PM - 31 Jan 2017


Claire McCaskill

✔@clairecmc
Filibuster = 60 votes procedurally.Different ways of saying the same thing.I support requiring a 60 vote margin for all Supreme Ct nominees

11:13 AM - 31 Jan 2017

• 
  

She's forever straddling the fence between her left-wing impulses and her conservative state. This would appear that she's not ruling out the filibuster -- yet, at least. Keep in mind that she demanded an "up or down vote" just a few months ago. If 41 Democrats decide to mount a filibuster against the new nominee, as some have promised before his or her identity has even been revealed, Republicans will decide whether to expand the Reid Rule; Ted Cruz says this option is definitely on the table, and Mitch McConnell has hinted the same.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...unce-opposition-to-scotus-filibuster-n2279367

 

[piezoe]

Look up Biden Rule. No confirmations in election year. Garland was another baby seal sent out by Obama to try to make people sad. Boo hoo.

You are at least consistent. Consistently ill informed that is. What you are referring to is known as the Thurmond Rule, which isn't a rule at all. It's the republicans that relabeled the Thurmond rule as the Biden Rule based on a speech Biden once gave. Neither Biden's nor McConnell's stance on appointments in election years is supported by precedent and both their positions would amount to, and McConnell's actually did, shirking of the Senate's duty as laid out in the U.S. Constitution. In McConnell's case, he blocked confirmation hearings for an entire year (minus a few days), whereas Biden's opinion was that the President should hold off making an appointment if a Court vacancy were to occur during the summer preceding an election. Neither man's views can be supported by precedent (although the Republicans falsely claimed they could be). It's pure politics. As usual, both the Republicans and Democrats are wrong, but again as usual, the Republicans are more wrong.

See WIKI, "Thurmond 'Rule'": from which this is excerpted:
...
The situation led to conflict between the White House and Republican leadership. A number of Republicans have claimed that political precedent prevents a U.S. president from appointing judges near the end of his term,[16] and threatened that the Republican-controlled Senate might delay the appointment of a new justice until after the inauguration of a new president.[17] Republicans cited a 1992 speech by then-senator Joe Biden, arguing that if a Supreme Court seat became vacant during the summer, President Bush should wait until after the election to appoint a replacement, or else appoint a moderate acceptable to the then-Democratic Senate; Republicans termed this principle the "Biden rule". Biden responded that his position was, and remained, that the President and Congress should "work together to overcome partisan differences" regarding judicial nominations.[18]

 

[Tom B]

Mike Pence Swipes at Democrats Over SCOTUS - This Seat Does Not Belong to Any Party

 

[jem]

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/biden-weighs-in-on-the-biden-rule

Republicans' have invoked portions of a 1992 speech Biden gave while serving as a senator from Delaware and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.


Referencing a hypothetical Supreme Court vacancy six months before a presidential election, Biden in 1992 warned that a hearing amid a contentious presidential election season would be "not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself" and recommended not holding hearings.

But later in the speech -- and the core of Biden's defense against what GOP lawmakers have named the Biden rule -- the then-chairman said consideration of a nomination should go forward if the president consults with the Senate and chooses a moderate nominee.



---

merrick garland is no moderate....


He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and clerked for a liberal stalwart of the Supreme Court, William J. Brennan. But the decisions Garland has written or participated in during his almost 20 years as a judge, after being nominated by Bill Clinton and confirmed in 1997, reflect that he is neither a centrist nor a moderate.

In fact, Garland’s long judicial history leaves no doubt that he would be the solid fifth vote that President Obama and his liberal, progressive allies want on the Court to eviscerate any remaining limits on the power of the federal government; to roll back portions of the Bill of Rights they don’t like, such as the First and Second Amendments; and to create rights that don’t exist out of the “penumbras” of the Constitution.

Think Progress,the voice of the Left, says “that Garland would side with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc in divided cases.” New York Magazine makes no bones about the fact that on the “most important issues facing the court – the environment and labor law, to name two – Garland is every bit as progressive as [Justice] Stevens.” An article in the New York Times reporting on a measure of ideology by four political scientists puts Garland to the left of Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, right next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, the two most consistently left-wing justices on the Court.

Garland is certainly hostile to the Second Amendment. In 2007, he voted in favor of en banc review of the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision invalidating the D.C. gun ban. In other words, he wanted to reconsider this decision, which the Supreme Court eventually affirmed in the historic Heller case, which finally established the “right to bear arms” as an individual right held by all Americans. In a 2000 case, Garland voted that a Clinton administration practice of retaining gun registration information for six months through the National Instant Check System was legal despite a 1968 federal law prohibiting federal gun registration and the 1994 law that created the instant background check that also banned the retention of such information.



So if you want someone who will actually rein in executive branch and independent agencies that are acting far beyond their statutory and regulatory mandates or violating the constitutional rights of citizens, Garland is not your man.

- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/...te-a-centrist-not-hardly#sthash.1as8Hcqs.dpuf

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Neither Biden's nor McConnell's stance on appointments in election years is supported by precedent and both their positions would amount to, and McConnell's actually did, shirking of the Senate's duty as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

Tough cookies snowflake. Like someone famously said "politics ain't beanbag." It's hardball and the biggest stakes of all are a Supreme Court seat.

There is no relevant "precedent", both because the senate is not bound by precedent and because of the intense politicization of both the judiciary and the confirmation process since the Bork debacle. Biden's comments were nothing but stating the obvious.

Obama knew there was no way he was getting anyone confirmed. It was all just political theater, put on for gullible liberals like you to get you upset.

 

[Tom B]

 

[Tom B]

 

[wildchild]

The democrats ultimately have no power to stop any SCOTUS nominee.

I don't know about that. They have plenty of power. All they need to do is raise a big enough bitch and smear Gorsuch and the media will gladly help them out. Certainly they can find some crackpot who knew Gorsuch 30 years ago who can make all sorts of claims that he hated blacks, Muslims, gays and women and the allegations will run non-stop in the news cycle. That will simmer for awhile and then you will end up with these weak-in-the-knees Republican Senators abandoning the pick. It happens all the time.

They almost pulled it off with Devos. I am actually surprised McCain or Graham didnt step up and save the day for the Democrats in that case.