Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
While Trump selects judges the Senate played a big role in the number of choices he has and played other games.
Things changed after the 2014 elections, when Republicans won back the chamber and virtually halted processing Obama’s court nominees. At the end of Obama’s term, in 2017, there were 17 circuit court vacancies, with seven nominees pending, and 86 district court vacancies, with 44 nominees pending.
Having so many vacancies to fill gave Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the White House more opportunities to pump up Trump’s confirmation rate in his first two years.
In 2017, McConnell went further than Reid in instituting another partisan rule change. This one did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, ensuring Neil M. Gorsuch would be confirmed — and Brett M. Kavanaugh a year later. And this year he limited the number of hours of post-cloture debate on district court nominees, a move that further greases the skids for more confirmations.
Another change in Senate operations during Trump’s presidency has been the weakening of the “blue slip” process, which allowed home-state senators to essentially sink a nomination if they did not signal their support. Obama and previous presidents were loath to choose nominees who would not pass muster with home-state senators.
McConnell has said that Democratic opposition won’t slow Trump nominees, a sentiment echoed by Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Georgetown’s Rom doesn’t expect doing away with the blue slip process to make a huge difference, but he said it will “allow the majority of the Senate to approve judges more quickly.”
“They’re going to try to put as many judges through that process as possible … and being able to ignore the home-state senators gives them a little bit of an edge,” he said.
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the political game playing with judges, started when the democrats rejected Bjork. Before that, confirmations were expected, even if the opposing party controlled the majority in the senate.
can’t have it both ways.
You’re saying McConnell and Graham should
let democrat opposition slow them down?
The American people
have chosen to give control of the senate to republicans. That includes the duty of confirming judges. If you don’t like it, win control of the senate. until
then, too bad.
After what the democrats tried to do to Kavanaugh, all you can do is point fingers at the republicans?
Many Republicans voted for Kagan and Sotomayor.
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