Merrick Garland

[MrWonka]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...s_56e85c4ce4b065e2e3d788f0?75nchl2oiqhipsc3di

It seems that President Obama has chosen about the most moderate and easily confirm-able candidate he possibly could have. On conservative judicial analyst even stated he was the most conservative Supreme Court Justice he can ever remember a democrat nominating. That combined with the fact that he's one of the oldest nominees in recent history should under normal circumstances make him a slam dunk for nomination even with a republican controlled Senate.

What scares me though is that I think Democrats have an incredibly good chance of winning not only the Presidency this year, but also taking back the Senate. Especially if they use GOP obstructionism to bash Republican senate candidates over the head during the election. If that were to happen Hillary(or Bernie) could easily nominate and get confirmed a relatively young, and much more reliably liberal justice. So what happens the day after the election once the Republicans realize they've lost both the presidency and the Senate. They could get together in a lame duck session and confirm this Garland guy figuring it's better than anything they'd get from Hillary. I'm not sure I like that.

 

[Stu]

You can bet that the Senate GOP leaders will not budge on their promise to not hold hearings on Judge Merrick. These guys thought Romney was going to trounce O'Bama. As far as trying to ram Merrick through during a lame duck Session, that will be up to Hillary. You got to figure that the Senate Dems are capable of gumming up the process so that it won't come to a floor vote if they decide they can get a younger more liberal justice next January.
Of course if it is Cuz who wins he may decide to nominate himself and be both Pres and Supreme Court Justice.

 

[MrWonka]

As far as trying to ram Merrick through during a lame duck Session, that will be up to Hillary. You got to figure that the Senate Dems are capable of gumming up the process so that it won't come to a floor vote if they decide they can get a younger more liberal justice next January.

I'm not sure that is actually the case. So long as Republicans control the Senate, Mitch McConnell gets to decide if a vote will be held or not. Like wise if Obama had appointed a more liberal judge, and some how Trump wins the presidency, but the democrats take back the Senate. There would be twenty days in January where the new Senate took over while Obama was still President, and they would at that point have the ability to confirm that judge before Trump took office.

 

[Stu]

I'm not sure that is actually the case. So long as Republicans control the Senate, Mitch McConnell gets to decide if a vote will be held or not. Like wise if Obama had appointed a more liberal judge, and some how Trump wins the presidency, but the democrats take back the Senate. There would be twenty days in January where the new Senate took over while Obama was still President, and they would at that point have the ability to confirm that judge before Trump took office.

That is probably the only scenario in which it would occur.

 

[acd]

If it's Trump, who would he nominate? Judge Judy?

 

[rawr]

I don't really see why GOP is so unmoving on Merrick - he seems pretty balanced and a solid choice. We could use some of that.

 

[MrWonka]

I don't really see why GOP is so unmoving on Merrick - he seems pretty balanced and a solid choice. We could use some of that.

If you can't see why then you're really not paying attention. Republicans have been doing everything in their power to gum up the works for over seven years now. They are playing the negotiators lie of radically painting President Obama as some kind of extremist Joseph Stalin type in the hopes that average Americans who are only kind of paying attention will assume their only exaggerating a little bit and that President Obama is only sort of an extremist. Unfortunately that's worked quite well, but it means that if they make a deal with him it looks really bad for them because it proves that he's either not the crackpot they've been saying he was or that they're dealing with the devil.

President Obama has essentially been like a customer walking on to a used car lot and offering the salesman the kelly blue book value of the car from the start whereas the republicans put a price on it that is double what it's worth. The tendency from people who aren't paying close attention is to assume that both sides should compromise, but if Obama did that he'd be overpaying. Republicans then use this to try and portray him as the one who is unreasonable. This nomination is the text book example of it. He's given republicans the best possible deal they could ever expect to get in his very first initial offer. If they just accept it right away after making all this fuss about how horrible it would be to let Obama make the appointment they look like fools even though they get a good deal.