Former Hillary Spox: Senate Dems brought “a butter knife to a gunfight” over judicial confirmations
Deal cut to fast track 15 more federal judges, so vulnerable Democrat Senators could go home to campaign.
Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer struck a deal to allow a unanimous consent confirmation of 7 federal court nominations, and a fast track on 8 others. And #TheResistance is pissed.
Bloomberg reported:
The Senate reached a deal Tuesday to swiftly confirm seven federal district court judges, helping President Donald Trump put an enduring stamp on the U.S. judiciary….
The seven newly confirmed judges are Terry Fitzgerald Moorer in Alabama, R. Stan Baker in Georgia, Charles Barnes Goodwin in Oklahoma, Barry W. Ashe in Louisiana, James R. Sweeney II in Indiana, Susan Paradise Baxter in Pennsylvania, and Nancy E. Brasel in Minnesota.
Eight more of Trump’s district court nominees are set for confirmation next week, said McConnell’s deputy chief of staff, Don Stewart.
Former Hillary spokesman Brian Fallon accused Senate Democrats of bringing a “butter knife to a gun fight,” according to Bloomberg:
“Mitch McConnell is in the middle of stealing the federal courts for conservatives, and Democrats continue to bring a butter knife to a gunfight,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive judicial group Demand Justice and a former spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “It is hard to think of a more pathetic surrender heading into the Kavanaugh hearings.”
This was another Mitch McConnell maneuver that paid off. While Democrats could slow down the process, McConnell kept the Senate in session which meant vulnerable Democrat Senators (of which there are almost a dozen) couldn’t campaign at home.
Democrats forced McConnell to act by unprecedented delay tactics in requiring cloture votes even on non-controversial nominees.
Historic Obstruction. @POTUS's nominees have already been subjected to more than four times as many cloture votes as the nominees of his six most recent predecessors combined in their first two years. pic.twitter.com/vIiQfg9vlB
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) August 23, 2018
Democrats resorted to those tactics because Democrats went nuclear in December 2013, eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level. McConnell and other Republicans warned Harry Reid and company that the move would come back to bite them, and it did. When Republicans took back the Senate in 2014, Democrats lost the advantage the removal of the filibuster had given them (since they didn’t have even 51 votes), and when Trump won, it set up the perfect storm: A boatload of vacancies and a Senate free to ram through nominees with a bare majority.
All Democrats could do is slow-walk the process, but they couldn’t stop nominees as long as Republicans were united.
Considering how Harry Reid brought this problem on Democrats, it was pretty cheeky for Reid’s former Deputy Chief of Staff to attack Schumer:
Adam Jentleson, former deputy chief of staff under Reid took a swipe at Schumer’s decision to fast-track judicial nominees in a deal with McConnell in a series of tweets on Tuesday. He also laid out how Democrats could slow down the confirmation process and potentially stop some nominees.
“This comes down to leadership,” said Jentleson, who worked for Reid as communications director and then deputy chief of staff from 2011 to 2017.
Colin Kalmbacher at Millenial Politics expressed the frustration felt by many of the Democrat base, Senate Democrats Are Working Better With Trump Than They Ever Did With Obama:
… these judges are mostly Trump judges – with one exception. (That one exception is Judge Susan Baxter, an elderly moderate originally nominated by Obama – and held up by McConnell – in 2015.) In essence, this means six of the seven judges have been vetted and hand-selected by the Federalist Society, an arch-conservative judicial group hellbent on returning America to a pre-New Deal system of law and politics….
Residents at the Hart Office Home for Geriatrics are well known for their buddy-buddy friendship and perpetual double-dealing. This is true. But Tuesday’s confirmations take the fecklessness of the official opposition to a disturbing new level. Why? Because Democrats got next-to-nothing out of this deal.
As mentioned, the elderly Judge Baxter isn’t likely to serve long on the bench. But close to 100 percent of Trump’s Federalist Society-sanctioned nominees are young and ready to remake the judiciary like it’s 1889. As celebrated journalist David Dayen noted, the real prize for Senate Democrats was getting to go home early.
McConnell clearly is viewed as the villain here, as Splinter fumes:
Democrats, now and for decades, have been shamefully outpaced by Republicans in their war for the judiciary. The staunchly conservative Federalist Society has an iron grip over Republican judicial nominations, and the Republicans have cheerfully thrown out all pretense of following procedure on SCOTUS vacancies, blocking Merrick Garland under the pretense of it being an election year while going full steam ahead with Kavanaugh. But Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have also spent years blocking the confirmations of lower-level judges, leaving more unfilled judgeships in the last Congress than any time since 1952—and a huge opportunity for President Trump.
With all this anger about McConnell’s hand in all this, I’ll ask the question again: Is Mitch McConnell “the Michael Jordan of owning the libs”?
This is crazy! @chuckschumer WHY wouldn’t you slow the confirmations down when you have the ability to do so?! You only need ONE DEM to do it?! https://t.co/69MBsLT1MB
— Debra Messing✍? (@DebraMessing) August 29, 2018
In other news, the White House just announced its 17th Wave of judicial nominations, including one judge each for the 4th and 9th Circuits.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
“This was another Mitch McConnell maneuver that paid off.”
Some think that this is Schumer’s attempt to maintain his power through collegiality once Dems lose a few seats in November. He knew they couldn’t stop the GOP, they could only piss people off.
If that’s true, then McConnell didn’t do anything.
Is that bomb is loaded with cocaine?
McConnell is feeding us scraps and we are supposed to praise him for it. There are more vacancies on the federal bench now than when Trump took office.
So what was the “deal”? A deal implies that McConnell gave something up. What? The D’rats were in no position to force anything. Either they stay in Washington and slow things down (which won’t get them the judges they want), or they go home to campaign. The best thing for the R’s would be to make the D’rats choose—stay in Washington, keep at their quixotic folly, and miss the campaigning season (a win for the R’s), or stop fooling around in Washington, go home, and get re-elected (a different win for the R’s). So, in McConnell’s position, why would he want to compromise on anything?
As I understand it, McConnell keeps the Senate in session until the confirmation vote is held. If the Dems leave early, then the confirmations win by default.
The deal was that they get to go home and campaign.
The DNC internal polls must be terrible.
Love the way it’s going. Liberals are just going nuttier than even I thought was possible.
I do think we need to re open the insane asylums to house them though. We could name them “Safe Spaces Inc.”
I was under the impression that Dems save spaces are in between their legs, they have had their heads tucked into that dark smelly space ever since Trump won.
Sponsored by fusion GPS
and a Senate free to ram through nominees with a bare majority.
Huh? An honest majority vote is now “ramming through”? Seems a bit too NewSpeak-ish for me.
The style-guide indicates it’s an “up or down vote” when it’s a Democrat nominee and “ramming through” when it’s a Republican.
It’s the “Republicans Pounce” rule of headline writing.
Mel Gibson’s next movie should be a biopic of Schemer called “The Year of Living Irrelevantly.”
That last tweet from Deborah Messing – the filibuster is GONE, sweetie. Time to wake up and smell REALITY.
As for Dirty Harry Reid, the revisionists with VERY short-term memories have already rewritten history – you’ve been written out of it.
I didn’t realize that lies, poison and subterfuge were classified as “butter knives”.
Better than Slim Pickens.
So, Democratic politicians know how to count, and their talking heads blame them for acting accordingly. That sounds familiar.
Mitch McConnel had a lot to do with creating the majorities he is now enjoying. For that, I am grateful.
“Former Hillary spokesman Brian Fallon accused Senate Democrats of bringing a “butter knife to a gun fight,” according to Bloomberg:”
More proof that Leftism is a mental disorder.
The Turtle is my Senator and I have voted for him since he went to Congress. Having said that, I have come to dislike him intensely for some of the sneaky and disgusting anti-conservative things he has done. To be fair, however, if this story is straight up, I must give McConnell credit for engineering this deal.
If McConnell is sneaky, then why do you imagine this story is accurate? Wouldn’t a sneaky guy feed you disinformation?
I’m no Nostradamus, but here’s my $.02:
Let’s say the Democrats gain a narrow majority in the House in November (Saints Preserve Us!). The problem for them is that the odds are very good the GOP will scoop up something like 6 Senate seats this fall and gain a near-filibuster proof majority. This tells me that:
1. While Donk hacks like Adam Schiff and Mad Maxine Waters are caterwauling in a doomed effort at impeachment, Trump and McConnell will be pushing through judicial nominees at a breakneck pace and effectively Trumpifying the federal judiciary for at least a generation to come.
2. Blowback for House Donks will be motherf**cker: They won’t get anything done, Trump will beat them mercilessly about the head and shoulders on a daily basis from now ’til 2020, and they’ll lose their majority that same year.
3. Trump will be reelected in a 40 state landslide with the end resulting in a Democrat implosion and, the Good Lord Willing, the party splitting in two.
Advantage: Trump.
The “Canary in the Coal Mine” for D-Rats is the low level of donations. If their base was as energized as they and their Poisonous Media Skunks would have everybody believe, then their coffers would be overflowing AND THEY’RE NOT.’
DON’T BE FOOLED BY POLLS, MEDIA REPORTS, OR ANYTHING ELSE: JUST GET OFF THE COUCH THIS NOVEMER AND VOTE EVERY D-RAT OUT OF OFFICE.
ALSO, IT’S PREFERABLE TO SHOW UP AND VOTE IN PERSON SO THAT YOU ARE NOT DISENFRANCHISED BY BACKROOM CHICANERY BY THOSE COUNTING THE BALLOTS. Our military that votes by Mail Ballots typically always gets disenfranchised by trusting skunks at the Election Authority is liberal strongholds as found in Florida’s Counties, e.g., Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Pinnellas, and St. Lucie.
One other thing: Goin in person puts more eyeballs on what is going on to keep the libs more honest than otherwise. If you see something, then say something because you just know the D-Rats will pulling out all the stops to cheat this year.
“Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of cocaine that Mitch snorts. I would like to send a kilo of it to my other Senators.”