Gorsuch - Go Nuclear?

[Starlight]

Sigh. Gotta love how the democrats can seize defeat from the jaws of victory, and how the Republicans can cheat to win no matter what.

[RumTumTugger]

Sigh. Gotta love how the democrats can seize defeat from the jaws of victory, and how the Republicans can cheat to win no matter what.

sorry Starlight it was not cheating the Democrats are the ones that made it possible by hanging the rules on during the last administration. If you want to say that was cheating then the democrats are as guilty. Stop pretending you know what goes on in American politics you have just shown you don't know. your hatred of conservatives is noted again. So is your biased take on what happened.

[Terraceth]

Sigh. Gotta love how the democrats can seize defeat from the jaws of victory,

What "jaws of victory"? What victory could they have gotten? If they didn't filibuster, Gorsuch would get confirmed, if they did filibuster, he'd get confirmed. What route of victory did the Democrats have here that they failed at? I'm completely baffled by this statement.

Now, I can see a good argument that Democrats shouldn't have filibustered, as all it did for them was remove the ability to filibuster a supreme court nominee (which could have come in handy for a more controversial future candidate), but that's still not really a victory for them so much as not losing as badly.

and how the Republicans can cheat to win no matter what.

There was no cheating in invoking the nuclear option, but even if one wants to pretend like there was, the Democrats pushed that button years before the Republicans, and in doing so set up the possibility of the Republicans furthering it.

[Starlight]

A few of the more on-point comments I've seen on reddit about this:

Obama put up with 5 years of unprecedented obstruction (half of all appointees filibustered in the history of the country were during his administration) before they changed the rules for the lower courts. [Mitch McConnell] and his party change the rules 2 months into a disastrously unpopular, scandal ridden presidency because democrats weren't going to sign off on a stolen supreme court seat.

And yet - if you ask a republican, The democrats are performing unprecedented obstructionism.

That is their talking point.

Republicans are the good guys who are upholding their constitutional duty, and Democrats are holding it up because politics. Never mind that democrats, at least so far, have opposed certain things for completely valid reasons.

Like Betsy DeVos. The woman can barely string a sentence together, and yet Mitch and the rest of the republicans in the senate think she's the bee's knees, and it's those dirty democrat obstructing her.

Same thing for Pruitt. Never mind that he literally lied under oath, and has a long history of literally trying to destroy the department that he now heads up. How dare those Democrats say no!

Same thing with Sessions, nevermind his, also, lying under oath, and never mind his long and sordid history of quite literally trying to prevent equal protection under the law for minorities. Democrats should sit down and shut up!

Also, keep in mind that right now they are blaming the democrats for holding up nearly 500 political appointees. Most of these positions haven't even had a pick suggested from Trump.

Remember kids, if you want something but the rules say no, ignore the rules, yell loudly, claim the other side is in unfair, complain, complain, complain, and then when you have leeway, change the rules, and blame the other side for complaining about the changed rules.

So Barack Obama, a constitutional law professor who won two terms with a majority of the vote, was not qualified to nominate a Supreme Court Justice.
But Donald Trump, a d-list celebrity who won a single term despite losing the popular vote by a historic margin, who doesn't read executive orders before signing them, who has killed 1472 civilians in just the past month, and is currently under FBI investigation for treason, is definitely qualified.

sorry Starlight it was not cheating the Democrats are the ones that made it possible by hanging the rules on during the last administration. If you want to say that was cheating then the democrats are as guilty. Stop pretending you know what goes on in American politics you have just shown you don't know. your hatred of conservatives is noted again. So is your biased take on what happened.

It must be hard for you to navigate through life being so stupid. It's a wonder you can put your shoes on the correct feet without help.

The Democrats did not "make it possible". This "nuclear option" has existed for more than a century, and has always been available for use to both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats were driven to use it in 2013 in order to keep the government running properly because historically unprecedented Republican obstructionism was preventing numerous positions from ever been filled. Their use of it didn't enable the Republicans to use it, the Republicans could have chosen to use it regardless.

What "jaws of victory"? What victory could they have gotten?

They could have confirmed Garland. They had an entire year to somehow, someway, get him onto the court, and they blew it. Their options ranged from doing deals, to doing a recess appointment, to Obama simply announcing that the Senate had been given a fair chance to exercise their constitutional authority of "advising and consenting" on the pick and by their inaction had declined to exercise their authority and that Garland was thus now simply on the court (which would have tied up the seat nicely as the court cases about whether this was allowed wound their way up the appeals courts).

[rogue06]

sorry Starlight it was not cheating the Democrats are the ones that made it possible by hanging the rules on during the last administration. If you want to say that was cheating then the democrats are as guilty. Stop pretending you know what goes on in American politics you have just shown you don't know. your hatred of conservatives is noted again. So is your biased take on what happened.

And this is exactly what the Democrats signaled that they were going to do when they were positive they were going to win the presidency and Senate in 2016

And let's also not forget that back when the Democrats were confident of not only winning the White House but taking back the Senate, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (who first instituted the "nuclear option" while Senate Majority Leader so that Obama could pack the courts) talked openly of using it to also push through Supreme Court nominees.

Source: Reid: 'I have set the Senate' for nuclear option

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Tim Kaine: Democrats Will Nuke Filibuster For Supreme Court Nominees If GOP Won�t Cooperate

Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine warned on Thursday that his party would move to eliminate rules allowing a minority of Senate Republicans to block Supreme Court nominees should they refuse to consider those nominated by a future president Hillary Clinton.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

The Huffington Post article quotes Kaine as proclaiming "We will change the Senate rules to uphold the law."

[rogue06]

A few of the more on-point comments I've seen on reddit about this:

Obama put up with 5 years of unprecedented obstruction (half of all appointees filibustered in the history of the country were during his administration) before they changed the rules for the lower courts. [Mitch McConnell] and his party change the rules 2 months into a disastrously unpopular, scandal ridden presidency because democrats weren't going to sign off on a stolen supreme court seat.

reddit And you whine about Mountain Man using breitbart.

And AFAICT the majority does not need to filibuster to stop something. They already have the votes. It is a tactic that the minority can use because they cannot stop it otherwise.

[rogue06]

If he turns out to be another lemon pushed by idiot conservatives I'm gonna move my personal doomsday clock to 12 and start preparing for ww3.

His record so far is that he goes with what he thinks the law says regardless if he likes it or not so I suspect that he'll vote with the liberals on occasion.

Interesting that whenever a big case comes up before the Supreme Court there is always talk of which way the conservatives and moderates will decide but never once does anyone ever wonder how the liberals will vote. That is because they vote in lock step without any regard for what the law says. For them it is ideology first and what the law says comes in a very distant second.

[Starlight]

His record so far is that he goes with what he thinks the law says regardless if he likes it or not so I suspect that he'll vote with the liberals on occasion.

I doubt it, I assume he'll be a Clarence Thomas / Scalia clone and put party/ideology over legal principles. FiveThirtyEight ranks Gorsuch about half-way between Scalia and Thomas on the liberal-conservative spectrum.

Interesting that whenever a big case comes up before the Supreme Court there is always talk of which way the conservatives and moderates will decide but never once does anyone ever wonder how the liberals will vote. That is because they vote in lock step without any regard for what the law says. For them it is ideology first and what the law says comes in a very distant second.

I would say it's always easy to predict how the conservatives will vote, because the conservatives ignore reason and simply vote for their side. The only Republican-appointed judge with even half a brain in his head seems to be Kennedy. Whereas the Democrat-appointed justices seem to do a good job of being competent justices and deciding cases on the merits.

[Starlight]

reddit And you whine about Mountain Man using breitbart.

Do you not understand the difference between me sharing a few forum comments that I think are interesting from another forum and explicitly saying I am doing that, versus MM pretending that Breitbart propaganda pieces filled with lies are actually substantive and accurate news?

[JimL]

anyone else find it strange that someone like Starlight and Tassman, who live on the other side of the world are so obsessed with internal politics in the USA? Especially Starlight who claims that the USA is irrelevant and thinks it tries to make itself more important in the world than it really is.

I could not even tell you who the leaders of Australia or New Zealand are, or anything about their politics. Mainly because I just don't care.

Aren't you Canadian Sparko?

[JimL]

In what way would not invoking the nuclear option here change that? If the Republicans opt not to do so, and the scenario you suggest occurs (vacancies open with Democrats in control, but they don't have enough for 60 votes), then all that would happen is that the Democrats would be the one pushing the button if the Republicans opt for a filibuster, with the same result.

Except that "60 vote rule" applies to everything, not just supreme court justices. Laws certainly aren't for lifetime because they have no life. Also, supreme court justices absolutely can get through with less than 60% of the Senators voting, as some have in the past.

Indeed, you seem to refer to the "60 vote rule" as if it's a rule to require 60 votes to get something passed, and while that is what it ends up functionally being, the actual purpose is to make it harder to perform a filibuster. It used to be there wasn't really much of any limit to the potential of a filibuster (you could have just a handful of people filibuster into oblivion even if something had extremely strong support in the Senate), so they introduced a rule that any filibuster could be thwarted by having 2/3 of Senators agree to make it stop, which was later reduced to 3/5 (hence 60 Senators due to us having 100).

If you want to talk slippery slope, then the Republicans using the nuclear option here is merely the natural progression of the Democrats invoking it beforehand; they invoked it for all appointees other than the supreme court, and this would merely extend it to the supreme court.

As for Merrick Garland, there was no actual "changing of the rules" there. Avoiding a vote on a nominee in an election year due to the possibility of new president (who might nominate someone more to their liking) is hardly anything new; it just got attention this time around because it was for a more high-profile appointment than normally this occurs for. You don't have to like it, but it was within the rules.

The democrats invoked the nuclear option because republicans, just like they said they would do when Obama was elected, were obstructing appeals court justices simply for the sake of obstructing. They started this whole mess by acting like children, promising to obstruct anything and everything that Obama tried to do. They want to blame it all on H. Reid for reacting to their childish behavior, and invoking the nuclear option for lower court judges, but it is they who brought it on themselves. And then again, what do they do next, they prove that they are just playing politics, they block Obama's Supreme court nominee as well, don't even give him a hearing even though they all agree that he is eminently qualified. They make up excuses such as a Presidents last year in office doesn't count. Just a bunch of bs.

[rogue06]

I doubt it, I assume he'll be a Clarence Thomas / Scalia clone and put party/ideology over legal principles. FiveThirtyEight ranks Gorsuch about half-way between Scalia and Thomas on the liberal-conservative spectrum.

I would say it's always easy to predict how the conservatives will vote, because the conservatives ignore reason and simply vote for their side. The only Republican-appointed judge with even half a brain in his head seems to be Kennedy. Whereas the Democrat-appointed justices seem to do a good job of being competent justices and deciding cases on the merits.

Didn't you already make enough of a fool out of yourself with your claim that Gorsuch almost always votes for the employer over the employee when even a cursory check revealed a much more mixed record especially wrt gender-related claims? The only thing he was pretty consistent about is that he heavily sided with the National Labor Relations Board's decisions.

As for your fantasy about conservative justices voting in lock step, correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Chief Justice Roberts, regarded as a conservative justice, vote in favor of Obamacare being legal? The conservative justices vote together between 85 to 91% of the time whereas the liberals vote as a block around 93 to 96% of the time.

That is why, as I said, there is always some doubt among pundits about whether or not one of the conservatives might break ranks but they don't even bother to wonder if the liberals will.

[Yttrium]

That is why, as I said, there is always some doubt among pundits about whether or not one of the conservatives might break ranks but they don't even bother to wonder if the liberals will.

Kennedy is still my all-time favorite. I'm going to miss him greatly when he leaves.

[rogue06]

Do you not understand the difference between me sharing a few forum comments that I think are interesting from another forum and explicitly saying I am doing that, versus MM pretending that Breitbart propaganda pieces filled with lies are actually substantive and accurate news?

MM is always clear that he is citing breitbart just like you make it clear that you are citing reddit. Both are about equally as reliable.

[Darth Executor]

I doubt it, I assume he'll be a Clarence Thomas / Scalia clone and put party/ideology over legal principles.

The constitution is very conservative friendly, putting ideology over legal principles amounts to the same thing as putting legal principles over ideology. It is liberal judges who have to grossly pervert the constitution to get their ideology entrenched (IE: right to abortion, which the constitution makes no mention of even tangentially)