Manchin Blames Dems for Nuclear Option: Harry Reid ‘Dead Wrong’
Manchin: Senator Byrd would be rolling over in his grave over Dems 2013 use of nuclear option
Did Joe Manchin just open the door for Republicans to invoke the nuclear option if necessary to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? In appearances on CNN and MSNBC this morning, Dem Senator Manchin blasted his fellow Dems for having invoked the nuclear option in the first place.
Said Manchin on Morning Joe: “I’ve been opposed to the nuclear option. I thought Harry Reid was dead wrong when he did it. I voted against that. My dear beloved senator, prior to my coming here, was Robert C. Byrd and he would be rolling over in his grave knowing what we have done.” That could be understood to mean: Dems, if the Republicans now use the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch, you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves for having opened Pandora’s Box.
Note: Manchin suggested that he wouldn’t be afraid to lose his seat since “my consolation is, if I get defeated, I get to go home. I get to go back to beautiful West Virginia. I’m fine with that.”
Maybe so. But it’s funny how ex-congress critters tend to wind up sticking around DC to cash in and live the life they’ve become accustomed to. Remember Bob Dole declaring during the 1996 presidential campaign that he would either win or go home to Kansas? He lost . . . and is still in DC.
BONUS COVERAGE: Totenberg Says Gorsuch Pick Might be Signal to Kennedy that it’s OK to Retire
Appearing before Manchin on Morning Joe, NPR’s Nina Totenberg said the “back-channel story to this is, that this is a way conservative activists hope, that they can telegraph to Anthony Kennedy, who’s 80-years old, and who Judge Gorsuch clerked for, this is a way to say to him ‘it’s all right for you to leave and give us a second appointment to the Court.’
Certainly, it would be good to have the ability to nominate an originalist to replace the more moderate, swing-voting Kennedy. The big enchilada, of course, would be the chance to replace one of the Court’s unreconstructed liberals. Justice Ginsburg: there’s a lovely condo in Pembroke Pines with your name on it!
WILLIE GEIST: Do you think, Senator, it would be as outrageous as what Republicans did with Merrick Garland for them to then go nuclear on this nominee and require only a simple majority to push him through?
JOE: Well, I really don’t — I’ve been opposed to the nuclear option. I thought Harry Reid was absolutely dead wrong when he did it. And I voted against that. My dear beloved senator, prior to my coming here, was Robert C. Byrd. He’d be rolling over in his grave knowing what we have done and what we continue to do and how we really act out. So with that being said, I think it should be a bipartisan vote. I think it should be 60 votes for our Supreme Court. I think at the highest court of the land it should be what we are coming together as Americans and not to continue to divide us. With that being said, let’s give the man a chance. Talk to him. My goodness. Don’t shut it down before we even get started.
. . .
MARK HALPERIN: You’re going to come under pressure from national liberal groups to join an attempt to block him by demanding 60 votes. So are you impervious to that pressure?
MANCHIN: I’m impervious to it because my consolation is, if I get defeated, I get to go home. I get to go back to beautiful West Virginia. I’m fine with that. I can live with that! That’s not what I was sent here to do, Mark . . . I didn’t come here to say, oh, my goodness, if I do this I might not get re-elected. I didn’t come here to be here for life. This is not a lifetime job. It’s basically, I came here to do the best I can and I’m going to make a decision. If I can go home and, Mark, if I can explain it and defend it, I can vote for it. If I can’t explain it, there’s an old saying: you can’t shine you know what and you can’t shine this stuff up and make it look any better or smell any better.
——————-
Totenberg Appearance
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Let’s start, though, with who this judge worked for. Obviously, Byron White and Justice Kennedy. Have been seen as center-right justices. Can we read anything —
NINA TOTENBERG: Yeah, you can read something into this. You can read something into this which is that the sort of back-channel story to this is, that this is a way conservative activists hope, that they can telegraph to Anthony Kennedy, who’s 80-years old, and who Judge Gorsuch clerked for, this is a way to say to him ‘it’s all right for you to leave and give us a second appointment to the Court.’ This is a chess move, in addition to everything else.”
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Comments
Very insightful article.
Concerning Manchin’s comment:
“Robert C. Byrd…..would be rolling over in his grave knowing what we have done,” makes me wonder if Manchin understands what Larry Johnson of NoQuarter just posted.
“The Democrats Crying Wolf About Trump”
“Far be it from me to offer Democrats advice (I remain a proud independent), but let me give it a shot. If you, the Democrats, persist in shouting down everything that Trump does you are actually creating a new variation in the old fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” If the Dems/Progs keep condemning everything that Trump says and does they will be ignored, tuned out. In fact, that is already happening. I was on John Batchelor’s show last night talking about the NSC kerfuffle and the total misrepresentation of the matter by most of the media. One of my friends who works in the media wrote me the following as a compliment to my commentary:
“Seriously…I had my hand Heaven-ward, shouting “Amen!”
…..
Please focus on the fact that he did not vote for Trump but, in light of the Democrats craziness, he is empathizing with Trump. In other words, the Democrat hissy fits are building support for Trump, not subtracting…..
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/79571/democrats-crying-wolf/
Joe Manchin is a reasonable person. Too bad none in his party will pay any attention.
Sorry Romey but I disagree. Manchin is a reed blowing in the wind. He wants to be a senator the rest of his life and decides how to vote only after putting his finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.
If almost all democrats refuse to work with Trump out of loyalty to Soros, then the ones who do deal with Trump gain massive leverage.
Manchin, who has always been a pork grifter instead of an idealouge, knows this and plans to rake in the big $$ for West Virginia and his contributors. He knows that there’s a massive pork spending infrastructure bill coming.
I doubt that we will see the nuclear option invoked for Gorsuch. There will be much whining, crying, hand-wringing, pearl clutching and barking from the Dems, but they will not chance the nuclear option being invoked. And neither will the Republican Establishment leadership, as this would hurt their masters down the road.
Potentially, trump will have tree chances to fill seats on the SCOTUS, possibly during his first term. The Scalia seat is one. Scalia was very conservative, so filling it with another conservative would ot change the make-up of the Court, as is has been for the last 8 years, significantly. But, you have Kennedy wishing to retire. He is a moderate andmoreof a liberal moderate than a conservative one. And, you have Ginsberg. While not likely to retire, she is rather eldrly and has been exhibiting health issues. It is quite likely that she will not be able to continue on the court for the next 8 years. Now, she is the unarguably the second most liberal judge on the court and arguably the most liberal. If Kennedy was replaced with a conservative justice this would significantly change the face of the Court. And, if Ginsberg was replaced with either a moderate or conservative justice, this would fundamentally transform the Court. In order to recover, the Democrats would have to gain control of the Congress and the Presidency, increase the number of seats on the Court and stack them with liberal justices.
So, look for Gorsuch to be approved without use of the nuclear option. We may, or may not see it used later, though.
The conservative court you speak of gave us the gift of Obamacare, not once but three times. Also, they unilaterally required all states to marry gays and all states to recognize all other state’s marriage licenses. Not so sure the conservative court helped us at all…
The last court was NOT a conservative court. It was an evenly divided court with a liberally moderate swing vote. The Obamacare case, which Roberts decided was a total anomaly. No one expected Roberts to vote that the Obamacare man date was anything other than an unconstitutional penalty. What people should be asking themselves in that case, was why would Roberts vote so far outside his apparent comfort zone? What kind of pressure was there that caused him to take the action that he did. The wording of the decision was so outrageous that it is extremely doubtful that he could actually believe it was constitutional. The same sex marriage decision was accomplished by Kennedy coming down as a liberal rather than a conservative.
But, if the court had 5 liberals, 3 conservatives and Kennedy, every case would be decided with a serious liberal bent. If there were 5 conservatives, or better 6, then the decisions would have a notably conservative result.
As you note, liberals will settle for the previous status quo, rather than chance the conservatives stacking the court through the use of the nuclear option.
You are assuming that the Democrat party will act rationally. Nearly a decade of experience points the other way.
I’m willing to predict that a few Dems hop off the Titanic before it plows into the iceberg, but not enough to get to 60, and the end result has to go nuclear.
Then in a year or two when a true liberal member of the Supremes hangs up his or her robe, the Dems will throw a hissy fit to end all hissy fits, complete with frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues when Trump nominates another conservative off his list.
And it won’t matter for a hill of beans, as the skids will have already been greased with their tears.
Ginsburg looks like she could keel over any minute, Breyer is 78, and Kennedy wants to hit the road. With Gorsuch, that’s four. Most definitely the nuc will be invoked at some point. They may as well get started on it now so they can perfect it as the commies get more and more pissed off.
Let Harry Reid go down as a hero to conservatism. 🙂 Let the one-eyed bastard revel in his glory while basking under the Nevada sun cooking up more scams with his failure of a son, Rory. He will ever be remembered for the nuclear option that helped make America great again with a solidly conservative Supreme Court.
That could be understood to mean: Dems, if the Republicans now use the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch, you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves for having opened Pandora’s Box.
On the contrary. He’s setting himself up to oppose any R attempt to use the nuclear option by pointing out that he opposed it when Reid did it, so he’s being consistent in opposing it now. and by pointing out that he broke ranks with his party and voted against it, he’s implicitly calling on moderate R senators to do the same if and when McConnell invokes it. The difference is that Reid had a large majority and passed it without Manchin’s vote, whereas McConnell only has 53 votes (including Pence) at his disposal, so if 3 Rs defect it goes down.
“Manchin: Senator Byrd would be rolling over in his grave over Dems 2013 use of nuclear option”
Byrd woulda been so upset that he woulda called for a Klan Rally,
https://exposingmodernmugwumps.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/byrd.jpg
That was my first thought, too.
I don’t see Manchin doing anything here but squirming.
Robert Byrd wouldn’t be doing any rolling … well, maybe a bit, as he’d have valued a bit more style over his lack of substance. Byrd was as big a s*** as anybody in the Senate, but he was much better at hiding it under a thick layer of imaginary decorum. When he’d screw someone over, he’d make it seem as if that’s the venerable old way the venerable old Senate always did it. Harry Reid didn’t hide it. He’s a criminal, and he knew it, and we knew it, and he knew we knew it, and he knew we couldn’t do anything about it, so hey, f*** you.
And Manchin accepted “the narrative” here, even though he knows it’s false. There’s nothing even slightly “outrageous” about what Republicans “did with Merrick Garland.” Geist knows it, Manchin knows it, we all know it. The narrative is falling apart. But they don’t seem to have anything else, so they get up on stage and keep saying their lines, perhaps hoping nobody notices that the theater is on fire and the audience is already heading for the exits.
And this one’s a hoot—“…if I get defeated, I get to go home.” He left out the part about “spending more time with his family.” It’s always a put-on, but still, there’s a proper form for these lies, and he should stick with it. As Robert Byrd would have told him.
Manchin is a sorry-azzed wimpy weasel. Only a bunch of dumb hillbillies would keep buying his BS. He did a lot more for his daughter’s big pharma company that she made millions from (remember the Epi-Pen fiasco? That was she as CEO and dad greasing the way to change the price and obastard letting it go through) than he has for the people of WV as a two-term governor and now a U.S. senator. The people of WV are dumber and poorer and as gullible as ever.
No kidding! The Constitution places limits on the fed gov for a reason. The dems didn’t want to do things the right way when they could get what they wanted by any means necessary. Now that’s coming back to bite them.
I notice that the dems had no problem with Obama trying to replace the conservative Scalia with a liberal Garrett but are having a hissy fit over Trump’s conservative pick.
Totenberg Says Gorsuch Pick Might be Signal to Kennedy that it’s OK to Retire.
Am I the only person that the above statement suddenly makes nervous about Judge (soon to be Justice) Gorsuch?
I have not been able to follow this closely, with having moved, closing down my El Paso, Texas law practice and opening my Waxahachie, Texas law practice.
That being said, Justice Kennedy lost his right to be called a Conservative a long time ago. His decision in Casey and his outright betrayals in Whole Woman’s Health and Fisher, as well as his numerous defections from the rule of law and precedent in support of the supposed changing of cultural norms have left the Nation fractured, more than whole.
As CNN put it so wonderfully aptly: “Justice Kennedy opts for a liberal legacy.” Kennedy was SUPPOSED to be a reasonable Conservative pick after Robert Bork was Borked, and Douglas Ginsburg got torpedoed.
I would be pained to have Gorsuch be placed on the SCOTUS, and then have him become an unreliable vote. Can anyone comment?