ConfirmThem

By DanCT Posted in Judiciary Committee — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

On the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Mark Shields essentially argues that those blasted Republicans have started nominating judges that the Democrats don't like, and it is terrible that they have single-handedly politicized the nominations game. But what's really been happening? Shields says:

But I'll say this, if, in fact we have reached the point where nominees are passed on straight party to be federal judges, lifetime appointments, are passed on straight party votes, not by the traditional way of 75 or 80 or 85 votes or in Scalia's case unanimously. I'll tell you what you are going to have, the next time the Democrats have it, and they're going to win back the Senate in your lifetime, certainly in David's and mine, what is going to happen is the Democrats are going to play tit-for-tat. They are going to say okay, now we put up our guys, we don't care what you think of them; we don't care if you think they are too liberal, we're going to push them through, 51-49 - and, boy --

As I recall, Republicans did not at all like the strikingly liberal Breyer and Ginsberg nominations by Clinton, but they voted for them anyway because the nominees were competent and were not corrupt. Shields makes it sound like President Bush is being outrageous by nominating judges that the Democrats don't like.

Right now Justice Scalia is a favorite of conservatives. He was confirmed on a 98-0 vote in 1986. In today's political climate, a judge like Justice Scalia would have zero chance of being confirmed. He wouldn't even get a vote. The difference is that Democrats have wholly bought into the notion that ideology ("judicial philosophy", they call it, or, sometimes "judicial temperament") is of paramount concern in considering nominations. They used to respect election results enough to say, "We lost the White House. Republicans have a sizable majority in the Senate. Our role in the appointment process is to provide a check against cronyism and corruption in the nomination process. If the candidate is competent and clean, we will defer to the President and voters. Scalia? We don't like his conservatism, but he's a good man. 98-0." Nowadays, it would be more like, "We only lost the White House by 100,000 votes in Ohio. Even though GOP has a majority in the Senate, the Senate is set up undemocratically. Our Senators really represent 0.5% more people than the Republicans do. Our role is to provide a check against the majority party and the majority of voters they represent. One time in a private conversation the nominee said something that some might construe as advocating the archaic idea that public policy--even abortion!--should be set by the legislature instead of the courts. He's way far out of the mainstream. And did you see what's in his confidential FBI file (please, PLEASE don't notice that I shouldn't even have access to the information in his file)? Why, it would be wrong to even allow a vote on that radical."

Ahhh... the times, they are a changin'...