honorentheos wrote: To a lesser extent, this is the problem I see with terming Supreme Court justices as proposed. If there is a willingness to do as you suggest and obstruct every single justice when there is not a super-majority in the Senate with a President of the same party in office, we're already ____. The system isn't functioning at that point.
We're already there, just without the "super-majority" part. Republicans will not appoint Democratic nominated judges except at the margins. What happened at the end of Obama's term is the new norm. Democrats probably will return the favor, though because the Senate is extremely Republican-leaning at the moment, this probably just means that Republicans get total control of the judiciary over time since a Republican unified government is much more likely that a Democrat one. Adding in a needed super-majority just makes it so justices are never appointed and gives Democrats the tools needed to even out the Republican advantage in the Senate.
I'm not sure what fixes this, but this proposal isn't it.
What allowed McConnell to hold back Obama's nominee in Merrick Garland was the refusal to hold a hearing. Garland was clearly able to overcome a super majority vote had it gone to a vote. That seems like the obvious weakness is correctable by forcing the Senate to hold hearings within a set number of days from a nomination as part of the amendment making the filibuster the law rather than policy.
ETA: put another way, the break down occurred because this function of the Senate was hijacked by a very small contingent of hyper partisan leaders who found a way to game the system which resulted in Senators not acting as representatives for their constituents but rather beholden to their party leadership.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote:ETA: put another way, the break down occurred because this function of the Senate was hijacked by a very small contingent of hyper partisan leaders who found a way to game the system which resulted in Senators not acting as representatives for their constituents but rather beholden to their party leadership.
I'm fairly certain the GOP and their base are thrilled to death right now, and feel like they're being represented perfectly by McConnell and his fellow Republican Senators.
What makes you think they feel differently?
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
honorentheos wrote:What allowed McConnell to hold back Obama's nominee in Merrick Garland was the refusal to hold a hearing.
I doubt that. That was helpful in preventing more political coverage of Republican obstructionism in an election year and made it easier to do, but Garland may have been blocked anyway. Obama's other appointments were also being blocked. The Supreme Court was the final straw of blocking Obama nominations up and down the Federal courts.
Garland was clearly able to overcome a super majority vote had it gone to a vote.
That I'm extremely doubtful of. There were only two Republican Senators who went on record saying they opposed blocking a hearing.
honorentheos wrote:ETA: put another way, the break down occurred because this function of the Senate was hijacked by a very small contingent of hyper partisan leaders who found a way to game the system which resulted in Senators not acting as representatives for their constituents but rather beholden to their party leadership.
I'm fairly certain the GOP and their base are thrilled to death right now, and feel like they're being represented perfectly by McConnell and his fellow Republican Senators.
What makes you think they feel differently?
- Doc
Put in a position where the majority of the Senate is sidelined, voters are left with a representative who is able to say just about anything, blame other parties, and otherwise do nothing for which they are accountable. Put in a position where they have to cast a vote, a Senator's accountability to their constituents becomes a function of their actions and record. While I'm sure the GOP base is very happy, many Senators rarely represent a constituency lacking sufficient independents, moderates and members of the opposition party who may have different feelings that an election might swing against them if their actual activity does not reflect the voter's views.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote: Put in a position where the majority of the Senate is sidelined, voters are left with a representative who is able to say just about anything, blame other parties, and otherwise do nothing for which they are accountable. Put in a position where they have to cast a vote, a Senator's accountability to their constituents becomes a function of their actions and record. While I'm sure the GOP base is very happy, many Senators rarely represent a constituency lacking sufficient independents, moderates and members of the opposition party who may have different feelings that an election might swing against them if their actual activity does not reflect the voter's views.
Oh.
Well.
crap.
Looks like we're in a pickle with no end in sight!
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
honorentheos wrote:What allowed McConnell to hold back Obama's nominee in Merrick Garland was the refusal to hold a hearing.
I doubt that. That was helpful in preventing more political coverage of Republican obstructionism in an election year and made it easier to do, but Garland may have been blocked anyway. Obama's other appointments were also being blocked. The Supreme Court was the final straw of blocking Obama nominations up and down the Federal courts.
Garland was clearly able to overcome a super majority vote had it gone to a vote.
That I'm extremely doubtful of. There were only two Republican Senators who went on record saying they opposed blocking a hearing.
While we can't do more than speculate on the past, I find the idea that the solution is to embrace partisanship and infuse it into the courts rather than modify the system to rebalance pitted interests in ways that force compromise little more than a white flag embracing the failure of our republic into little more than anarchy.
The filibuster served an important function for a very long time, filtering out a handful of poorly qualified or compromised candidates in my lifetime while largely allowing moderate ideological influences to occur. I rarely hear radical proposals to fix the process coming from quiet corners, but rather those prone to favor radical proposals out of an ideological sense that they might come out the better if things get shook up. That's a red flag by itself, and the fact the proposals favor aspects of modern politics I view as fatal to democracy just another reason to view it as embracing the darkness rather than seeking to recover the light.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Robert Bork believed the judicial branch's job was to interpret the law rather than legislate from the bench. We saw what happened to him so I guess the supreme court being less political really is out of the question. This has been going on for a long time.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
honorentheos wrote: Put in a position where the majority of the Senate is sidelined, voters are left with a representative who is able to say just about anything, blame other parties, and otherwise do nothing for which they are accountable. Put in a position where they have to cast a vote, a Senator's accountability to their constituents becomes a function of their actions and record. While I'm sure the GOP base is very happy, many Senators rarely represent a constituency lacking sufficient independents, moderates and members of the opposition party who may have different feelings that an election might swing against them if their actual activity does not reflect the voter's views.
Oh.
Well.
____.
Looks like we're in a pickle with no end in sight!
- Doc
There are certain states where their alignment with one party or the other is cemented in place. I think your point holds where the GOP has such solid support. Utah or Montana isn't going to reevaluate if Orin Hatch should have been reelected for a ninth term or Mitt Romney should be replaced with a Democrat this cycle because McConnell has them on a short leash. That doesn't hold true for a sufficiently meaningful number of Senate seats for the question of whether or not their Senator is representing them to be meaningless. Avoiding a hearing was the political tactic of choice over trying to oppose Garland's nomination in a hearing for reasons.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
ajax18 wrote:Robert Bork believed the judicial branch's job was to interpret the law rather than legislate from the bench. We saw what happened to him so I guess the supreme court being less political really is out of the question. This has been going on for a long time.
Bork had a Nixonian stink on him that doesn't favor comparison to other nominations.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
ajax18 wrote:Robert Bork believed the judicial branch's job was to interpret the law rather than legislate from the bench. We saw what happened to him so I guess the supreme court being less political really is out of the question. This has been going on for a long time.
Bork had a Nixonian stink on him that doesn't favor comparison to other nominations.
Bork was fine. He got screwed over and you know it. That was as bad as Garland getting tanked.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.