-PJ
Sure, if there were to be a conservative Republican super-majority in the Senate that could happen.
The article that we are commenting on has an incorrect assumption: that all the judges appointed by a president share that president’s political ideology. That just isn’t true.
One way to stop ideological judges is already in place:
Blue Slips
Senatorial courtesy is manifested in something called the “blue slip.”
This is a device used by the Senate Judiciary Committee to communicate with the home-state Senators about a nomination to the U.S. courts of appeal or district courts, or to be a U.S. marshal or a U.S. attorney. When a nominee is referred to the Judiciary Committee, the committee sends a letter (on light blue paper) asking the two home-state Senators to take a position on the nomination. The Senators check off the appropriate box on the sheet — either approve or disapprove — and return the paper to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
The blue slip process is used only by the Senate Judiciary Committee — no other Senate committee uses it for other kinds of nominations. The practice of using blue slips dates back to at least 1917.
Since 2001, the status of blue slips for each judge nominated have been publicly available on the Internet.
The blue slip practice is not a formal part of the Judiciary Committee’s rules, and the determination of just how much weight to give to a Senator’s opposition to a nomination is left up to Senator Grassley. Among other issues, he decides whether to honor the objections, voiced through blue-slips, from all home-state senators or just those who belong to the same party as the president. Senator Grassley honors them all and liberals hate him for that.
The blue slip process developed because the Senate needed to create a way for members to register their disapproval if a President did not involve them enough in the “advice phase” of a nomination. The blue slip process is the sanction that a president faces for violating the norm of senatorial courtesy in the judicial appointment process.
Blue-slipping is how senators can block federal judge nominees from their state; by simply not returning blue slips sent by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a senator can stop a nominee, an effective bargaining tool with the White House.
To date, 329 Obama-nominated federal judges have been confirmed by the United States Senate. 121 of those federal judges were confirmed unanimously, 38 were confirmed by unanimous consent, 65 were confirmed on a voice vote. That’s 224 federal judges who were basically unchallenged and 105 who were challenged.
6 Obama nominees were rejected via Republican filibusters of their nominations. Obama withdrew all six filibustered nominations and in all six instances Obama nominated a different judge who was then confirmed.
I can guarantee you that when an Obama judge from a state with a Republican Senator was confirmed unanimously, it was because Obama nominated someone recommended by that state’s Republican Senator rather than risking a Blue Slip rejection.
Now in states with two Democrat Senators, we’re probably getting communists, socialists, global warming fantatics and baby-killers.