This is setting up to shift precedent - and not in a good way.

[Drunken Irishman]

Supreme Court nominations have always been political and contentious. It's no surprise, since this person is going to dramatically alter the laws of this country for a generation. I get it is political. I get there will be ideological disagreements.

But on the whole, regardless who nominates, whether a Democrat or a Republican, the debate is had and the nominee generally is appointed to the court. Only rarely have there been outright, nasty battles over a nominee - and only two I can think of recently. The first was Bork, the right-wing conservative Reagan appointed to replace a swing vote. The Democrats rallied, and blocked the vote, largely due to Ted Kennedy, and Reagan was forced to replace him with the more moderate Kennedy. The second time came when Bush nominated Harriet Miers, who was woefully underqualified to be on the bench. The criticism over her was not just from Democrats, either - but Republicans. The outrage wasn't over her ideology, or beliefs, but rather her qualifications. She would eventually withdraw her name before a vote was taken.

That's it. There have been hearings, and accusations (look at Thomas) and yet, at the end of the day, the President generally gets his pick ... even with the opposing party holding the senate (see Kennedy).

That's about to change. This is a path I'm not sure I want America to go down. I didn't want it with Roberts, either. I think it sets a bad precedent and leads to the possibility of a hijacked court or even worse compromising.

We'll see, I guess.

[napi21]

1. Just what path are seeing? nt

[Drunken Irishman]

3. The one I outlined in my post.

[Capn Sunshine]

21. The one where President Obama nominates a centrist swing voter ?

Most of the Presidents success has come from programs constructed to appeal/ compromise with all sides, which is how anything gets done in this country.

Much to the chagrin of the purists here and elsewhere.

[arthritisR_US]

35. That's depressing. nt

[Kip Humphrey]

2. unfortunately, the republicons don't care.

[Hortensis]

34. The Hard Right is desperate. Their ideology is losing to the

demographic transition, and the Supreme Court is their one real chance to cement their ideology into our government policies for another 30 years or so.

And by "they" I'm very much also thinking of the ultraconservative plutocrats who have been pulling the right's strings from behind the scenes for years.

Even most of our conservatives are not THAT conservative by nature. They've been lead farther right than they otherwise would be by constant and clever machinations of front groups and media created and controlled by ultraconservatives who've been spending billions to replace the will of the people with their own.

[yourout]

4. Have to agree....in todays political climate I see no way they let an Obama appointment through.

Not going to happen.

[OrwellwasRight]

5. Hmmmm.

I don't actually relish the idea of someone so centrist they could get confirmed by this Senate. We need someone on the Court who is as far left as Alito is right. The way to get good decisions is to have balance, not a Court that leans so far to the right as it does now. There are no far leftists though there are several far rightists (Alito, Thomas, and until today, Scalia).

[Drunken Irishman]

7. This is setting up for a compromise, tho.

If Republicans can ultimately just vote no on every nominee Obama parades in front of 'em, and they're allowed to, it lays the foundation for this happening in the future.

[OrwellwasRight]

9. Well, then I'd rather skip it

and wait for President Sanders to nominate an actual lefty. That is just my opinion.

[Drunken Irishman]

10. Obama won't defer to the next president...

Especially when it's not a given it'll be Sanders or Hillary.

[OrwellwasRight]

13. I'm just saying what I prefer.

Not what Obama will do. To me, it would be a shame to allow the Court to remain a RW court by nominating a centrist.

[Drunken Irishman]

17. Even a centrist would move the court more to the left.

[OrwellwasRight]

19. I don't agree.

It would keep it right wing because it would provide no balance to Thomas and Alito. Look, there actually is not a problem having a reactionary on the court so long as they are balanced by a radical. Think about Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan. They were both Far Left. Not centrists, not moderate leftists. And Scalia was unable to do so much damage while they were on the Court for balance. When you cut off the Court's left wing, as a series of Democratic moderate appointments have done, you enable the decisions to keep moving to the right, drip, drip, drip.

[Drunken Irishman]

22. Scalia dying ends that balance.

The court's rulings are almost all down the line anyway. An extreme liberal, someone to the left of RGB or Sotomayor, is not going to vote much differently, if at all differently, than they have. The vote would still stand the same if it's a moderate liberal or an extreme liberal on most major issues. Where it moves the court is on the right - the conservatives automatically become the minority now after being the majority.

[OrwellwasRight]

23. There is no balance.

You're not getting it -- and not reading my posts.

Alito and Thomas are both far right, reactionary. There is NO ONE that far left on the court. Therefore, it leans right. Appointing a centrist means it still leans right.

And you could not be more wrong about any old Dem nominee will do.

Examples:

Eldred v. Ashcroft: This is the case challenging the copyright law famous for not letting Mickey Mouse to fall into the public domain. The US has some of the strictest copyright laws in the world, and yet monopolists who want to keep profiting off of creativity that occurred more than 70 years prior went to Congress to retroactively extend their copyrights another 20 years and got the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. GINSBURG wrote the the pro-monopolist majority opinion and SOUTER (considered a liberal though appointed by Bush I) joined her. It was 7-2, not 5-4. You can't count on moderates to always lean left.

BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore: This is the case that said that it violated the "due process" rights of the judicial person BMW, Inc. to impose a punitive damages judgment on BMW of $2 million. The case was about BMW committing fraud by lying to purchasers of used cars about repairs performed on those cars. The monetary damage done for each lie was tiny, so the jury had given a large punitive award to deter BMW from repeating the conduct (just compensating the plaintiff would not have deterred BMW's lies and frankly $2 million would not have killed them). Anyway, in this case Stevens (nominated by Nixon, but considered the most liberal member of the Court after the departure of Marshall and Brennan) wrote the decision supporting BMW's rights. Breyer (Clinton nominee) and Souter (described above) joined him. In this case, Scalia actually voted the right way (a surprising break from his consistent pro-business record).

Vernonia School District v. Acton: The Supreme Court ruled that high school athletes could be randomly (no suspicion required) drug tested, for the purpose of deterring drug use, not for the purpose of finding performance-enhancing drugs (which might have made some sense). The is a pretty egregious violation of 4th Amendment rights, but the Supreme Court developed an irrational fear of drugs in the 1990s (not surprisingly after the left wing fell off of the court) and approved the search not just in this case, but in just about every 4th Amendment case it heard so long as the government could tie the search to the fear of the boogeyman "drugs". Anyway, in this case Ginsburg and Breyer (Clinton nominees) voted with Scalia, Rehnquist, et al, while Souter, O'Connor and Stevens dissented.

In any case, the point of all of this is to say that you cannot always count on a Justice's vote. So it is better to have full balance from far right to far left than to only have a spectrum of far right to center left. Ginsburg is no Marshall. We need a Marshall.

[Drunken Irishman]

28. I get it. You're just wrong.

The balance does shift. Especially on choice. Scalia was anti-choice. Even if Obama nominates another Sotomayor, they're already changing the balance of the court on that issue.

[OrwellwasRight]

30. I'm not wrong.

You just refuse to recognize or engage in facts. I bet you find yourself very convincing.

[Drunken Irishman]

31. Question...

Do you think a court with a RBG clone in place of Scalia would rule the same way on choice as a court with Scalia?

You know the answer. It wouldn't happen.

[OrwellwasRight]

36. Questions

Is abortion the only thing the courts rule on?

Are all Democrats pro choice?

Do you even have a clue of the importance of the economic rulings of the Supreme Court?

Have you even ever heard of the case West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish and are you aware that we would never have gotten Roe v. Wade if that case had never ended the Lochner era? We'd still be in the Gilded Age and unlikely to have experienced the cultural revolution that made Roe possible.

You know the answer. All votes matter. Not just the single one you care about. And no, I would not want a Ginsburg clone. She has voted against working people in the past. Please read my prior posts.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

14. Damn straight - poppy bush replaced Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas

Fuck this moderate shit. GOP didnt extend that courtesy when a liberal giant left

[OrwellwasRight]

15. Thank you for getting my point!

[justiceischeap]

6. I don't think the Republican party would be allowed to get away with this until November

I could be wrong though. I see some obstructionism but since the decisions would fall back to the last Federal decision, and liberals pretty much own those courts, it's a no-win situation for them. It would also be great campaign fodder against them.

[Jim__]

8. Nixon had 2 of his SC appointments shot down.

From Time:

Richard Nixon had two high-profile Supreme Court nomination strikeouts. First, in 1969, he put forth judge Clement Haynsworth (left) — a Southerner reviled by labor and civil rights groups for rulings related to union representation and school desegregation. Labor activists, hoping to derail the Haynsworth nomination, disclosed that the judge had a possible financial stake in a case he decided while on the Fourth Circuit. The Senate voted 55-45 against his nomination. The next year, Nixon tried again, nominating another Southerner, G. Harrold Carswell (right), reviled by civil rights groups for his earlier support for segregation. He went down in flames as well, with one Senator infamously arguing unsuccessfully for his confirmation by saying, "Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers, and they are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?"

Get that last sentence with respect to Carswell's nomination: "Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers, and they are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?"

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

11. Scalia was confirmed 98-0

Roberts and Alito sailed through as well

Obama wont get that courtesy from the GOP

[oberliner]

16. It's never easy for Obama

They literally cannot vote in favor of anything or anyone he is in favor of.

[OrwellwasRight]

24. Except for the TPP.

They love Wall St and the US Chamber of Commerce more than they hate him.

[oberliner]

25. House Speaker Ryan: Not enough support for TPP vote

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday he does not see enough support to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership up for a vote in the chamber, adding that the Obama administration must do more to persuade lawmakers to accept the trade deal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-tpp-usa-house-idUSKCN0VK1W1

[OrwellwasRight]

29. That doesn't mean he doesn't support it.

That means his caucus is telling him they don't really want to vote on it before the election and face any potentially negative consequences. Furthermore, the Rs are trying to get side deals that would make the deal even MORE pro business (undermine the tobacco carve out, get 12 years of additional monopoly rights for PhRMA instead of 8, and require countries to allow banks to store your private financial data in any country they want to).

If you doubt that Rs will vote with President Obama, look at the Fast Track vote:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/h374

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00218

They WILL vote for the TPP. The only question is when.

[Arugula Latte]

27. Well, yeah, but he's black, so, ya know, the rules don't apply to him!

[tritsofme]

12. Republicans also kept a vacancy hostage near the end of LBJ's term.

And Nixon ultimately filled the seat. Though I believe it was much later in the election year than we are now.

[Drunken Irishman]

18. There was also Democrats who came out to narrowly defeat that nominee.

I don't think we'll see something similar. Obama needs a list of nominees and just start parading 'em through.

[1939]

20. The Senate was majority Democratic during the LBJ administration

The Republicans questioned the suitability of the nominee and raised so many questions that the Democratic majority in the Senate didn't want to ram it through.

[stillwaiting]

26. I won't be surprised if Republicans demand Obama nominate someone that will not overturn Citizens

United. Even if that demand is behind closed doors (which it most likely would be).

What Obama does would be interesting in that case. Compromise? Maybe so. He shouldn't, but he might.

[loyalsister]

32. What worries me more

is the influence it could have on the election. If they were to succeed in blocking an appointment for an entire year, we would come very close to having elected a SC justice. Seems dangerous.
On the flip side, if that happened after another Democrat is elected and we recapture the Senate, it could be interpreted as a sort of poetic justice.
I doubt the current Senate would risk it.

[alphafemale]

33. Bork was and is an absolute lunatic.

Glenn Beck grade lunatic.