The former federal prosecutor kvelled
So who is Merrick Garland?
Let’s consult the Beltway establishment first, which is to say the Washington Post:
President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, calculating that choosing the highly regarded jurist who has served presidents from both parties will ultimately force Senate Republicans to drop plans to block his nomination.
Garland, the 63-year-old chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and a moderate, does not fit neatly into a category that is likely to mobilize Democratic voters in an election year. He is the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, not a “first” in the way an Asian American or black female nominee would have been.
Not firsty, but not WASPy either. Then again this looking for First boxes to tick, in the form of various Identity Categories, is more than a little creepy…even though at the same time I’m always hoping for more of exactly that – more women, and if they’re also brown or otherwise outside the usual pattern, all the better. You know how that is? Thinking it would be a good thing while also thinking it’s tacky the way we keep noticing, and listing, and categorizing? Anyway…Jewish immigrants from Russia probably didn’t get here with a drawer-full of silver spoons jutting out of their mouths.
Anyway he’s collected compliments from all directions, and that will make it harder (but doubtless far from impossible) for Team Republican Assholes to refuse to confirm the nomination. The Post sagely suggests that Obama did this on purpose. Ya think?
And while Obama was composed, and even a bit defiant in his remarks, it was Garland’s visible emotion that seemed to raise the stakes for Republicans in what will surely be a protracted political fight his final year in office. The former federal prosecutor choked up as he thanked the president for giving him “greatest honor of my life,” aside from when his wife of nearly three decades agreed to marry him, and kvelled about how his mother was watching him that very moment on television, “crying her eyes out.” His father, he added with regret, was not alive to witness it.
Was she verklempt?
After the announcement, Senate Republican leaders reiterated that they did not intend to vote on the nomination because they believe the next president has the right to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last month.
That’s so schewpid. There is no such “right.” I think I have the right to shout “fire!” and get everyone to leave this library while I sit here in peace. Except that I don’t think that.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), taking the Senate floor after the nomination was announced, vowed to continue blocking its consideration.
“It seems clear that President Obama made this nomination, not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed, but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election,” he said. “The American people are perfectly capable of having their say — their say — on this issue. So let’s give them a voice.”
Wtf? What sense does that make? How does that seem clear at all? It seems very occluded to me. And the American people already had their say, when they re-elected Obama in 2012. He’s still serving that term. There is no rule that says he can’t nominate a candidate now, and it is considered a bad idea to leave a Supreme Court vacancy open for a pointlessly long time.
Then the article goes on with a lot of inside-baseball political stuff. Horserace stuff. Yawn.
McConnell is a horrid nasty ass gas bag. His actions are unAmerican. Plus he once again got it WRONG about the American People Having Our Voice about appointments to the Supreme Court.
What kind of person can he be? It’s true what they say, most of the people who are politicians want only one thing – to be politicians. McConnell and his cult don’t give a shit about anyone in the US except themselves and their putrid power games.
I think part of it is recognizing that the American people doesn’t mean to them what it means to us. We think it means the overall citizenry, but they, being smarter than we are, know that it means people who agree with them.
And they still haven’t gotten over Robert Bork.
One needs certain social standing to be considered a person by the GOP.
Samantha – and certain color and gender. Though they will accept their token people of color and women, they really do seem to maintain token status most of the time.
This may be what they mean by constitutional originalism – the original constitution didn’t recognize any citizens but white male property owners.
I see this appointment as a serious pick (Garland is well-qualified, and has a long and distinguished career on the D.C. Circuit, which is considered the second-most-important court in the country after SCOTUS), but also gamesmanship. By appointing a white guy with a centrist record, who faced a long nomination fight when he was elevated to the D.C. Circuit, but came out of it with Republican praise, Obama is essentially throwing down the gauntlet here for the Republicans and testing their willingness to stonewall. Already, eight of them have said they’ll meet with Garland, even if Grassley and McConnell refuse to.
Garland has to be going into this with his eyes open, and he had to have agreed to take his lumps if the Senate Republicans keep doing what they’re doing. As I said, he’s been through this kind of shit from them before, and he’s got a lifetime appointment at the most prestigious court outside SCOTUS as compensation if things don’t work out.
It also doesn’t hurt that he’s charming and clearly honored by the nomination. McConnell looks awful for calling him up almost immediately after his teary, excited press conference and telling him he won’t meet with him. And the fact that the pick irritates liberals who wanted a younger liberal or progressive judge is just gravy — the more lefties protest, the more Republican resolve will waver. We’ve moved from a theoretical nominee to a real one, who just happens to be a really nice guy praised by people from both sides of the aisle.
In the end, Obama will either wind up with a Justice who may be to the right of the liberals on the court but is well, well to the left of Scalia, or the Republicans will stonewall, which is not going to help the ones who are in danger of losing their seats.
The tokenizing thing has worked so well…We have Clarence Thomas, whose lips haven’t moved since Scalia’s hand was removed from his back. We have a court with 6 out of nine seats held by right wing Catholics.
A competent jurist without deranged ideological or religious commitments would be a huge step back toward normal. It would be nice, and not difficult, for Obama to find someone with extra demographic value as well, but no one is going to be seated while the country is under control of anarcho-capitalist evangelicals.
John the Drunkard @6,
1995 called, it wants its talking point back. I’m not a fan of Justice Thomas by any means, but the claim that he was Scalia’s puppet is nonsense. It got some traction because in his first term or two with the Court he voted with Scalia some high percentage of the time. But over his entire tenure on the Court, those two voted together about as often (if not less) than, say, Kagan and Sotomayor have. In other words, about as much as you would expect any pair of ideologically similar justices to vote the same way.
The fact that Thomas rarely speaks at oral argument — meh. It would be a problem if you had several silent justices on the Court, but one is fine. Have you ever read a transcript or listened to a recording of a Supreme Court argument? The attorneys struggle to get a word in edgewise as it is, with only 8 justices interrupting to ask questions. The fact that Thomas doesn’t showboat at oral argument is probably the best thing about him!
First of all, only 5 of the (now 8) justices are Catholic. I assume you were counting Scalia to get your “6 of 9”?
Second, if you consider Sotomayor (who is one of the five Catholics) to be “right wing,” then you have a rather idiosyncratic definition of that phrase.
Seems to me that the Republicans are playing Calvinball here. An important part of playing that game is to loudly assert changes of rules whenever convenient.
I remember when some Republicans got steamed up over Bill Clinton stating his opposition to the Vietnam War while he was studying in Britain. They claimed that it is wrong to object to American policies when away from American territory.
They’ve not only claimed that only the next president has a right to choose Scalia’s replacement, they’ve claimed that Garland has no right to make a public statement about his nomination at this point.