“Arguments Both Indefensible And Dishonest”: Senate Republicans Debunk Their Own Supreme Court Talking Points
Senate Republicans have had about a month to come up with a coherent rationale for imposing a blockade on any Supreme Court nominee from President Obama. The fact that they’ve failed so spectacularly to think of anything sound is probably a bad sign.
But the fact that they’re starting to debunk their own talking points is far worse.
A couple of weeks ago, for example, a wide variety of Republicans repeated this line about the merits of a partisan blockade: “This is a tradition that both parties have lived by for over 80 years where in the last year, if there was a vacancy in the last year of a lame duck president, you don’t move forward.”
Today, another Republican senator – who actually supports his party’s strategy – acknowledged that his party’s argument was a lie. The Huffington Post noted:
One of the Republican Party’s most candid senators, Lindsey Graham (S.C.), admitted Thursday a stark fact that the rest of his colleagues have tried their best to avoid: that their blockade of any Supreme Court nominee by President Barack Obama is unprecedented.
And he insisted that he was going to go along with it, even though he predicted it would worsen relations between the parties and the functioning of the Senate.
Graham conceded, “We are setting a precedent here today,” even after weeks of GOP rhetoric about how they’re just following an existing precedent. The South Carolina Republican added that his party’s current gambit would establish a “new rule” – effectively admitting that such a rule is not currently in place.
The comments were held during a Judiciary Committee discussion about why the Judiciary Committee will refuse to have a discussion about the Supreme Court nomination that does not currently exist.
Graham’s unexpected concession made his party’s arguments look both indefensible and dishonest, but Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) went even further in discrediting his own party’s claims. TPM reported:
During a Thursday morning radio interview, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) candidly explained that Senate Republicans would take a different approach to a Supreme Court nominee if a Republican president were in office and replacing a conservative justice.
Johnson was asked on Wisconsin radio show “Morning Mess” about Senate Republicans’ refusal to consider President Obama’s forthcoming nomination to the Supreme Court. The host hypothesized that things would be different if Mitt Romney were in the White House.
The far-right Wisconsin senator, up for re-election this year, said it would be “different” if a Republican president were currently in office. As Johnson put it, “Generally, and this is the way it works out politically, if you’re replacing – if a conservative president’s replacing a conservative justice, there’s a little more accommodation to it.”
He added, “But when you’re talking about a conservative justice now being replaced by a liberal president who would literally flip the court – you know, let’s face it, I don’t think anybody’s under any illusion – President Obama’s nominee would flip the court from a 5-4 conservative to a 5-4 liberal controlled court…. And so it’s an incredibly serious moment in terms of what’s the composition of the court going to be.”
In other words, as far as Johnson’s concerned, pleasant-sounding rhetoric about principles and Senate norms and traditions is all just window dressing. President Obama is a Democrat, and since Antonin Scalia was a conservative, Ron Johnson believes the constitutional process should be ignored for the most brazenly partisan reasons.
I’m honestly not sure if Senate Republicans are even trying anymore. They made up a “Schumer Rule,” which turned out not to make any sense. They made up a “Biden Rule,” which proved the opposite of the GOP’s intended point. They pointed to a “Thurmond Rule,” which kind of exists, but doesn’t apply here. Republicans made up an 80-year “tradition” out of whole cloth, which Lindsey Graham now concedes doesn’t exist.
They blamed the blockade on the “nuclear option,” which was ridiculously dishonest. They said this is payback for Robert Bork, which made even less sense.
And now a prominent Senate Republican is admitting publicly that the party’s professed principles are irrelevant and the party would be acting differently if the president weren’t a Democrat.
Why not simply drop the pretense and admit that the party is being craven?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 10, 2016
“Not A Single Senate Endorsement: Even Now, Senate Republicans Still Don’t Like Ted Cruz
When it comes to endorsements from Senate Republicans, the current tally has to sting a little for Ted Cruz. Aside from the two sitting GOP senators who are still in the race, there are 52 Republicans in the chamber – 14 of them have backed Marco Rubio, while Donald Trump and John Kasich have just one endorsement each.
Ted Cruz, who’s worked alongside his Republican colleagues for a few years, has zero.
Shortly before the Iowa caucuses, Trump made this dynamic a part of his message. “Think about it, not endorsed by one United States Senator and he works with them every day,” Trump said of Cruz. He added, “Not one Republican senator. How do you do that? How do you run a country that way? … The guy doesn’t have any endorsements.”
Yesterday, however, National Review published a report that captured quite a bit of attention, noting that the endorsement race would soon be jolted.
With the prospect of Donald Trump’s nomination looming over the GOP, Cruz is set to unveil endorsements from more than four senators this week, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
This, naturally, prompted quite a bit of chatter about which Senate Republicans would back Cruz and what effect it’d have on the race. Late yesterday, however, National Review updated its piece:
An earlier post stated that Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign was set to unveil a series of endorsements from Cruz’s fellow senators. The report was erroneous. As of this writing, the campaign has no pending Senate endorsements to announce.
As of this morning, National Review has revised the piece once again.
With the prospect of Donald Trump’s nomination looming over the GOP, Cruz is set to unveil a slew of endorsements – at least one from a Senate colleague – as early as this week, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Whether or not the piece will be updated again is anyone’s guess, but as of this minute, that’s what it says.
For what it’s worth, the actual answer to the question about Cruz’s Senate support is more than just trivia. It’s no secret that Senate Republicans detest their Texas colleague – Lindsey Graham recently joked, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you” – and they’ve directed their endorsements elsewhere for a reason.
If, however, GOP senators started to see Cruz as a credible, competitive rival to Donald Trump, and they started endorsing him at this key point in the race, it would send a powerful signal about the direction of the overall race and the steps the party might be willing to take to derail their own frontrunner.
As things stand, yesterday’s reporting about Cruz’s sudden popularity among his own colleagues was apparently wrong. Senate Republicans still hate Trump, but as it turns out, they still hate Cruz, too.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 8, 2016
“That 1992 Clip Of Biden Is Very Misleading”: No, Joe Biden Is Not A Supreme Court Hypocrite
It’s a mighty thin reed that Republican leaders hang onto when they selectively cite then-Sen. Joe Biden’s remarks from 24 years ago as evidence to deny any Obama appointee to the Supreme Court a fair hearing and a vote. President Obama is right in saying, “We all know senators say stuff all the time,” and the excerpt Mitch McConnell and the other Republican leaders cite to support their obstructionism is not what Biden was saying when he spoke at length on the Senate floor in late June 1992.
It was the end of the court’s term, a time when aging justices often hand down their resignations. There were retirement rumors about 83-year-old Justice Harry Blackmun. Biden, in his role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wanted to discourage Blackmun from stepping down and the Bush White House from thinking it could confirm a replacement before the election now five months away.
There was no vacancy on the court, and Biden wanted to keep it that way. In just two weeks, the Republicans would hold their party convention with President George H.W. Bush running for re-election in a highly charged three-person race against Democrat Bill Clinton and Independent Ross Perot. In the Senate, hard feelings lingered from the previous October’s Anita Hill hearings, and Biden warned that if the administration tried to get one or the other justices to resign in order to create a vacancy, he wasn’t inclined to go along with that.
And if they did—and here’s the olive branch, which funny enough isn’t getting much air time as the old clip is replayed—he would consider confirmation of a nominee in the Kennedy mode, as in Justice Anthony Kennedy, a solid but conservative-leaning jurist who was confirmed unanimously in February 1988, Ronald Reagan’s last year in office. Biden didn’t in any way say or imply he wouldn’t be holding hearings, or that he would do what McConnell and the other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are doing, which is sight unseen refusing to hold hearings or to even meet with the nominee.
It is a show of disrespect not only for Obama but also for the Constitution and the executive’s role to propose and the Senate’s to advise and consent. McConnell gleefully cited the cherry-picked Biden excerpt as proof of what would happen “if the shoe were on the other foot.” But if that were true, the GOP would at least go through the motions before regretfully finding the nominee is an extremist they can’t support. That would be rough politics as usual.
The bigger question: Will anyone nominated be out of the running for Hillary Clinton, if she’s the next president? Or will that person move to the front of the queue? Will Republicans feel compelled to go after that person with extra zeal? And given these unknowns, who would say yes to Obama?
Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, presiding over two of the most contentious nominations in history, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Bork’s “originalism,” in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, sparked strong opposition and his extensive writings gave critics plenty to work with. The assault was brutal, giving rise to the verb, to be “borked.” Biden won praise for challenging Bork on certain rights to privacy that he rejected because they weren’t enumerated in the Constitution. The full Senate rejected Bork 58-42, with six Republicans joining 52 Democrats to vote against him.
The Anita Hill hearings in October 1991 were not Biden’s finest hour, and his role chairing those hearings will be reprised in the HBO movie Confirmation, airing on April 11 and starring Kerry Washington as Hill, Wendell Pierce as Clarence Thomas, and Greg Kinnear as Biden.
Emotions are still raw even after 25 years, and the scuttlebutt in Washington is that Biden will not be pleased with his depiction in the film as far too deferential to Thomas.
That may surprise viewers today, but criticism then of Biden, as one disaffected liberal put it, was not that he was a partisan in-fighter, but that “he bent over backwards to grease the skids for the most unqualified successful Supreme Court nominee we have ever seen.”
People involved in the fight then and interviewed for this article did not want to be quoted by name. The hearings were brutal, with Thomas calling them “a high-tech lynching.” Women’s groups siding with Hill were convinced Thomas was lying and demanded Biden order lie-detector tests and subpoena records of X-rated films Bork had allegedly rented. They blamed Biden for not putting more pressure on Hill to come forward earlier.
The coziness of an all-male and all-white Judiciary panel grilling Hill, a prim college professor who had reluctantly come forward alleging sexual harassment by Thomas, set the stage for a political revolution. The following year, 1992, a record number of women sought political office and a record number won, dubbing it the “Year of the Woman.”
The HBO film will portray at least one witness against Thomas that Biden never called and that critics believe could have ended Thomas’s confirmation. Biden in his role as chairman told the woman the Republicans had dug up more stuff on her, and he described what she would face on national television if she came forward. She chose not to testify, and her statement is in the hearing record.
Confirmation will air at a potentially critical time in the current court fight, but whatever conclusions viewers draw, it should be underscored that Biden let the nominations of Bork and Thomas go forward even if he and his political party disagreed. They each got a vote, and Thomas is now in his 24th year on the court after being confirmed with a mere 52 votes in the Senate.
By: Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast, March 3, 2016
“Done With Quiet Protest”: Republican ‘Takers’ Take Down The Establishment
Just as Donald Trump did a Super Tuesday stomp on the Republican establishment, the establishment showed why it deserved the rough treatment. The Republican Senate leadership yet again announced its refusal to consider anyone President Obama nominates for the Supreme Court until after the presidential election.
It is the job of the U.S. Senate to hold hearings on, and then accept or reject, the president’s choice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said they will not take on the work — while showing no inclination to forgo their paychecks.
Talk about “takers.”
Yes, talk about “takers.” That’s how Mitt Romney described Americans benefiting from Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare and other government social programs during his failed 2012 run for president. Never mind that most of the “takers” have also paid for some of what they have received.
Working-class Republicans have finally rebelled against the notion that everything they get is beneficence from the superrich — and that making the superrich super-duper-rich would drop some tinsel on their grateful heads. They were done with quiet protest and ready to take down the Republican bastille, stone by stone. And the angrier Trump made the establishment the happier they were.
The Bastille was the symbol of France’s Old Regime. The storming of the prison in 1789 kicked off the French Revolution.
Republican disrupters from Newt Gingrich on down liked to talk about a conservative revolution. They didn’t know the first thing about revolutions. This is a revolution.
Back at the chateau, Republican luminaries were calmly planning favors for their financiers. They assumed their party’s working folk would fall in line — out of both hostility to Democrats and through hypnosis.
So you had Jeb Bush amassing an armory of campaign cash over bubbly and hors d’oeuvres at the family estate in Maine. You had Marco Rubio devising a plan to do away with all capital gains taxes — the source of half the earnings for people making $10 million or more. You had Ted Cruz concocting a plan to abolish the IRS. (Without the IRS, only the working stiffs would be paying taxes, the money automatically deducted from their paychecks.)
Not much here for the alleged takers, who actually see themselves as “taken from.” Unlike the others, Trump wasn’t going after their benefits. He even praised Planned Parenthood, noting it provides a variety of health services to ordinary women.
Trump would be a disastrous president, of course. But he knows how to inspire the “enraged ones.” In the French Revolution, the enraged ones were extremists who sent many of the moderate revolutionaries to the guillotine. (The enraged ones also ended badly.)
As the embers of Super Tuesday still glowed, The Wall Street Journal published the following commentary by one of its Old Regime’s scribes:
“To be honest and impolitic, the Trump voter smacks of a child who unleashes recriminations against mommy and daddy because the world is imperfect,” Holman Jenkins wrote. Take that.
No responsible American — not the other Republicans and certainly not Democrats expecting strong Latino support — would endorse Trump’s nasty attacks on our hardworking immigrants. But large-scale immigration of unskilled labor has, to some extent, hurt America’s blue-collar workers, and not just white ones.
Democrats need to continue pressing reform that is humane both to immigrants already rooted in the society and to the country’s low-skilled workforce. Do that and the air comes whooshing out of Trump’s balloon.
Back in Washington, the Republican leaders will probably continue to avoid work on this issue or a Supreme Court nominee or anything else Obama wants. They should enjoy their leisure. After Election Day, many may have to look for real jobs.
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, March 3, 2016
“Senate Republicans Swat Away Obama’s Outstretched Hand”: A Blockade Unlike Anything Seen In The American Tradition
If we were to pretend American politics operated by traditional rules, we’d have some basic expectations about what policymakers would do in the event of a Supreme Court vacancy. A sitting president would reach out to Senate leaders, some names would be floated as part of a conversation, and a nominee would be put forward and considered.
With this in mind, President Obama hosted an entirely predictable gathering in the Oval Office earlier today. Vice President Biden was there, along with the top Senate leaders from each party, and the top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee from each party.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today, “The president … gave everyone in the room, Democrats and Republicans, the opportunity to put forward their own suggestions for potential Supreme Court nominees. The president didn’t guarantee that he would choose that person, but the president did indicate that he would take seriously any recommendations that either Democrats or Republicans had to put forward.”
It all sounds quite routine – or what would be routine under normal American circumstances. But as it turns out, this Oval Office meeting was actually a reminder about just how abnormal the times really are. The New York Times, quoting one of the gathering’s participants, said today’s discussion was “very short.”
Leaving the meeting, [Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid] suggested that the Republicans appear to be waiting for Donald Trump to be in the White House. “There wasn’t much said at the meeting,” Mr. Reid said.
The Hill also quoted Reid saying in reference to the GOP senators, “They were adamant. They said, ‘No, we’re not going to do this at all.’” Referring to Democrats, Reid added, “All we want them to do is to fulfill their constitutional duty, and at this stage, they are deciding not to do that.”
It wasn’t that Democrats were cool to the GOP’s ideas for possible nominees. Rather, Republicans simply said there should be no nominee – and if one exists, he or she will be ignored, regardless of qualifications or merit.
That this was the expected outcome of the meeting doesn’t make it any less scandalous. The political world’s collective assumptions about how this is likely to play out shouldn’t obscure the fact that Senate Republicans are orchestrating a Supreme Court blockade unlike anything seen in the American tradition.
They are doing so without a defense or a coherent explanation, ignoring the Constitution and traditional norms in the process.
For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this morning that he and his party will “observe the ‘Biden Rule,’” in reference to a 1992 speech then-Sen. Joe Biden delivered about hypothetical high-court vacancies.
Under the circumstances, it seems quite likely that McConnell knows he’s brazenly lying. There is no such thing as the “Biden Rule,” and if there were, it wouldn’t justify the current obstructionism. On the contrary, in his 1992 remarks, Biden, describing the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy that did not exist at the time, explicitly said that if the then-Republican president “consults and cooperates with the Senate, or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justices Kennedy and Souter.”
If McConnell wants to believe this established a “rule” that must be honored, then today’s Senate Republicans will have to meet, consider, and vote on President Obama’s nominee – steps McConnell has vowed not to take.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 1, 2016
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