ConfirmThem

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

Edward Whelan at NRO raises an interesting question---

Can you guess the nominee's name and fate in Senate confirmation hearings given the nominee's expressed beliefs in the following?

1. a constitutional right to prostitution and polygamy;
2. eliminating Mother's and Father's days and replacing them with a gender-neutral "Parent's Day";
3. sexually integrated prisons on the theory that male prisoners needed to practice dealing with females for when they got out;
4. the notion that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are damaging because they perpetuate sterotyped sex roles;
5. court-ordered enforcement of racial quotas to correct racial imbalances in the work place, even when there is no evidence of discrimination;
6. despite the flowery non-discrimination language, the nominee selected not a single black employee in her 50 hires even though her office was in a majority black neighborhood.

Not only was Ruth Bader Ginsberg not filibustered --- she was promptly confirmed 96-3, despite her being far to the left of the majority of the Senate and the American people. She was not filibustered because the Republicans understood that it is largely the prerogative of the President to fill the courts with quality people. The Senate's role is to provide a check on corruption and cronyism, and not to impose ideological filters on the nominees. In addition, because Republicans were then in the minority in the Senate, they would not have had majority support to justify blocking her. She was competent, qualified, and ethically clean, so the Republicans plugged their noses and voted to confirm.

We've come a long way since then...