Posted on 12/05/2016 1:01:25 PM PST by SeekAndFind
That’ll be … difficult to do since they can’t control which nominations reach the floor and foolishly farted away their power to filibuster nominees three years ago.
The left is anxious, though, and wants to see some fight in their team so Schumer and his caucus are stuck with slowdown tactics.
“They’ve been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice. We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified?” fumed Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs.”…
Democrats could conceivably force up to 30 hours of debate for each Cabinet nominee, which would be highly disruptive for a GOP Senate that usually works limited hours but has big ambitions for next year. The minority could also stymie lower-level nominees and potentially keep the Senate focused on executive confirmations for weeks as Trump assumes the presidency and congressional Republicans try to capitalize on their political momentum…
Democrats are likely to require roll call votes and possibly delay the nominations of Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education and Tom Price to to be Health and Human Services secretary, in addition to Mattis, Mnuchin and Sessions.
The attorney general nominee looks like he’s in for an especially rough ride. Brown said Sessions “was dissed by the Senate once for his racism,” a reference to his rejection by the chamber 30 years ago to become a federal judge.
We’ll have to blog in shifts in February so that someone’s around for all of the inevitable 3 a.m. tweets by President Trump grumbling about Democratic obstructionism. The main target appears to be Jeff Sessions, partly because Dems think they can make hay of the racial accusations that helped block him from a seat on the federal bench 30 years ago and partly because the position he’s up for carries heavier symbolic significance than other cabinet positions do. The Justice Department is supposed to stand apart from politics; the Attorney General sets the tone for how committed the new administration is to the rule of law. Senate Democrats want to delegitimize their friend and colleague Sessions in hopes of casting an early pall over Trump. Sessions’s confirmation is a fait accompli, though. If even one Senate Republican has said he’d opposed to the pick, I’ve missed it. If there’s any suspense on the actual floor vote, it’ll be how many purple-state Dems run away from their base and vote with the GOP. Schumer’s going to lose his first big fight, although if he can give Trump a black eye by damaging Sessions, he’ll probably take that.
What Democrats would really like to do is block at least one of Trump’s nominees but their options for doing that are few. If Trump rolls the dice on David Petraeus for Secretary of State, Schumer might be able to peel off enough Republicans to deny Petraeus 51 votes. The Democratic base will demand party unanimity on that vote, I assume, as payback for Trump’s attacks on Hillary for mishandling classified information during the campaign. If Dems hang together, Schumer would only need three GOPers to defeat the nomination. If Trump doesn’t nominate Petraeus but chooses someone less controversial, like Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, then the best and maybe only option to defeat one of Trump’s nominees is … James Mattis, who needs a waiver from the law requiring seven years of retirement before a veteran can serve as Defense secretary. That waiver can be filibustered; all Schumer would need is 41 members from his 48-seat caucus to go along. The political problem is that Mattis may well be the most popular cabinet pick Trump has made. He’s widely respected as intelligent and disciplined and adored by the Marines who served under him. Defeating him would be spun by Trump as a slight to the military writ large and to a man who’s served his country well for decades. And whoever Trump nominates after Mattis’s defeat could be considerably worse. But the left may demand a scalp from Schumer, and if he can’t find one elsewhere, Mattis’s may be the only option. What does Schumer do then?
The fallback plan, I assume, if all of Trump’s cabinet nominees end up being confirmed is for Dems to pay back the GOP for Garland by Borking virtually anyone Trump nominates for the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court. (The filibuster still exists for SCOTUS nominees, remember.) You can foresee how Trump will react to that: “If they block my first nominee, my second will be twice as conservative.” It’ll be the judicial equivalent of “the wall just got 10 feet higher.” Democrats might be OK with Borking the second nominee too, though, again on the theory that they’re only showing the same resolve in protecting the vacancy that Republicans showed in refusing to give Garland a hearing and a floor vote. Schumer’s going to need to huddle with red-state Democrats like Tester and McCaskill sometime soon and gauge how much political pain they’re prepared to endure in the name of blocking Trump’s Court nominees. Will they vote for a filibuster on the first nominee? On the second? He can lose seven of them but no more. Given the reports of angry Hillary staffers out for revenge against Trump, I assume some sort of new pressure group will be in place next month for Democrats to lean on the Testers and McCaskills to stand firm against Trump’s picks. But then, I also assumed Hillary would take Wisconsin and Michigan more seriously as swing states than Arizona.
Exit question: If Reid hadn’t nuked the filibuster for presidential nominations three years ago, would McConnell be preparing to nuke it now? I assume the answer is yes, knowing that Trump would throw an epic public tantrum once he discovered that the rule that’s allowing Democrats to block his cabinet picks could be canceled by the GOP at a moment’s notice. But that’s a hesitant yes. There are some old-school Senate traditionalists in the GOP caucus who look dimly on the idea of further restraints on the filibuster, and with a 52/48 Senate, McConnell could only afford to lose two votes. I’m not so sure it happens without Reid’s precedent. Congratulations on your legacy, Harry.
You would still be seven short of sixty. And that’s assuming that people like McCain, Graham, Sasse, or Flake vote with the rest of the Republicans.
“WV Sen. Machins will probably go with the GOP as he is up for re-election, and should be a Republican anyway.”
I agree with that. I also understand that he offered to caucus with the Republicans but they turned him down. I think Sen Machin is more Conservative than say McCain or Linda Graham.
His first nomination needs to be Attorney General. So as to start the ball rolling on the overhaul of the DOJ.
Yes, they lying scumbag will probably try to play 'conservative'. It's an act. Don't let him fool you.
and should be a Republican anyway.
No, he should be selling used cars in Farmington.
And actually... the bible says that by God’s mercy, man’s age (in this age) would reach 80. Scalia kicked the bucket at 79. Maybe a reason for the Lord allowing such longevity in the USSC is that, even with wrongheaded policy, at least America can know what the policy is.
Till now, when Trump mattered. Now it was cast in doubt, so that people could see the doubt, and react.
The more I live, the more I believe in God’s miracles of unexpected preservation. I might have been dead years ago due to a number of things. I probably ought to be dead now. God just flatly said no to that. My job here isn’t finished.
I don’t think Elaine Chao was necessarily Trump’s first choice for Transportation Secretary.
I think The Art of the Deal is underway here.
Trump operates from hunches quite a lot.
If it’s God who is giving him the hunches... we’re going to see some very unexpected people do some very unexpected things. She’s “approximately OK” — certainly head and shoulders over anything a Democrat administration would come up with — but not the most stellar at the moment. That’s OK. Stars turn into supernovas.
Conservative Review ratings:
McConnell: 40%
McCain: 32%
Graham: 30%
Manchin: 16%
FYI
Truth said!
Who is Merrick Garland?
Ratings like this really ought to be a vector, not a scalar. And even yet they may fail to notice hidden tendencies that will come out under unusual conditions.
I am hoping that Congress DOES NOT recess & allow Obama to appoint any SC justice as a recess appointment. |
He will do that-—bet on it.
So R.I.P. Antonin. If you believed on Christ for salvation of your soul, your eternity is secured and there won’t be any more judicial nonsense for you to put up with. Not with the heavenly Supreme Court that never errs.
I’m a WEST Virginia mountaineer ... I’ve seen the smarmy bastard before he was senator. He’s a snake, IMO, with ‘hidden’ tendencies to lurch left at any opportunity. Somehow, he has fooled a lot of people out-of-state. We’ll see in two years how many of US he has fooled.
That's why she'll filibuster, nothing to lose, and go out being a hero to the looney left.
Or we’ll see in two years how God once more said “I’ve got the X-ray eyes. Fooled all you smarties!”
But I WILL vote against him in 2018.
You should rather say, “If the Lord wills, I will vote against him in 2018.”
Easy, put the senate in recess on 1/21 and let President Trump make recess appointments and then do the confirmation dance afterwards.
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