Timelordwho wrote:
Word on the street is Srinivasan is on the short list; he passed his appointment 97-0 last time. It would be fairly difficult for the R-squad to hold that up.
There's a world of difference between confirming someone to be a district judge (or whatever level he's at), and supreme court justice. And there's also a world of difference based on whom you are replacing on that court. Hence, while the usual suspects did their usual saber rattling about the confirmations of Kagan and Sotomayor, both were confirmed in a reasonable amount of time. Both were replacing previous liberal justices, which did not upset the previous balance on the court, so the right did not obstruct that. If Obama appoints another liberal to replace Scalia though, that's just not going to wash, since that would massively tip the balance.
I am a bit annoyed by McConnells chest pounding insistence that the Senate would block any nominee Obama sent. Yes, I get that everyone's assuming that Obama would never appoint anyone who would be an ideological replacement for Scalia, but the public doesn't necessarily get that. Bit of an optics problem on his part (which he's always had IMO).
To be honest, what the GOPs in the Senate should do is generate their own short list of acceptable candidates to replace Scalia and then hand them to Obama as suggestions. Then make a public statement to this fact and say that if Obama really wants to fill the empty seat in a timely manner, all he has to do is pick someone on the list, and they'll confirm that person. Of course, if Obama's goal is just to create a fight and try to blame it on conservatives, then he'll pick someone he knows they wont confirm (which, lets be honest, is what he's actually doing here). Point is that you get ahead of the issue and turn Obama's own language on himself. If he thinks it's his constitutional duty to fill that vacancy than part of that duty requires him to select someone that he believes the Senate will confirm. If he chooses someone he knows they wont confirm, then he's not fulfilling his duty. Or some language to that effect.
Of course, for this to work, they'd need to make sure that list contains at least one woman and one person of color. Otherwise, the Left will turn it back around into the stereotypical "old white men conservative" trope, and reject the list on that grounds. Dunno. Either way, I'm not super happy with how they're handling this media wise. As usual, they're falling too much into the "GOP is obstructionist" narrative. But then again, Mitch is a bit thick on that and always has been. The guy seems completely unaware of how his statements actually read in the public's eye.