ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Posted in Fillibuster — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Bruce Fein has a piece titled Jaded Political Benchmarks in the Washington Times rebutting Senator Harry Reid. Kay Daly has a piece titled "Same Story, Different Nominees," in GOP USA (also published in Opinion Editorials), blasting the uncivil treatment of nominees. Brian Mitchell has a piece titled GOP Getting Ready For 'Nuclear Option' To Confirm Judges, in Investor's Business Daily, quoting Kay Daly: "Any compromise would be entirely unsatisfactory. . . . I think [the Senate GOP] . . . would find an absolute uproar from the grass roots that they would not soon forget." And, Michael Miller of Elkhart, Indiana has this to say:

[A] portion of the minority refuses to accept the will of the people. They have turned the Constitution and more than 200 years of history on its ear. They refuse to allow a vote on a number of appointees to the federal bench and they do so on purely partisan grounds. And now they threaten a halt to Senate business should they be thwarted in their attempt to usurp the president's prerogative to appoint said judiciary. I say let them bring government to a grinding halt. They have already marginalized themselves to the majority of us. Let them alienate the remainder of the populace.

E.J. Dionne makes the point that Democratic Senators represent slightly more of the American population than Republican Senators. However, that's no reason to trash the concept of Senate majority rule in the appointment process, for a couple reasons. First, the will of the people, as reflected in the Constitution, is that the Senate represents states whereas the House membership is based upon population (and in the House the Republicans represent more people than do the Democrats). The second reason for not reading too much into the populations represented by the two parties in the Senate is that --- in the grand scheme of things --- the Senate and the President are jointly responsible for staffing the judiciary, and thus the Republicans who are involved in the appointment process actually represent more people than the Democratic Senators do. This population issue was discussed previously here at confirmthem.