Ron Fournier says GOP decision not to hold hearings on Obama nominee is sign of systemic dysfunction. Fault of both parties equally.
LOL.
As I’ve noted in a few of my posts, none of the purported ‘precedents’ Republicans have come up with over the last three days to justify their actions speaks at all to the current situation President Obama faces after the death of Justice Scalia. But even the seeming Holy Grail of GOP gotchas – Sen. Schumer’s speech before the American Constitution Society in 2007 – basically says nothing when you actually hear or read what he said, as opposed the media chatter or even the brief Politico write-up everyone has been passing around.
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We’re hearing all sorts of chatter right now about what sort of nominee President Obama should send to the Senate, given the more or less flat rejection of any nominee. I say ‘more or less’ because even those who don’t quite accept McConnell’s flat refusal are I think still intending to vote down any nominee. Should he nominate a super liberal nominee, someone who most helps the 2016 election campaign, a quasi-conservative in the hopes of pulling a few a few Republican senators over? The last suggestion strikes me as silly. But I think most of the speculation is itself beside the point and sort of silly because there are things about Obama himself which I think tell us how this plays out.
Earlier this morning I was listening to Pete Williams on MSNBC saying there’s basically precedent on both sides for what the Republicans are now trying to do: block the President from making a Supreme Court nomination at the beginning of the last year of his term, and that the GOP has plenty of precedent on its side. That is frankly an astonishing claim, with virtually no history to support it. It is also a sobering example of how successful Republicans are usually and are now at working the mainstream media to normalize what are in fact unprecedented actions.
I noted last night that one of the most telling things about the immediate reaction to Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was that even the deeply mainstream and well-respected “SCOTUSBlog” published an appreciation of Scalia which took it as a given that the Republican Senate majority would refuse to confirm any nomination to replace Scalia. This evening I saw an email from the RNC research department claiming that Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) is a ‘hypocrite’ for saying the Senate should fulfill its constitutional duty and hold a vote on President Obama’s nominee to succeed Justice Scalia.
Beside all the political and electoral stuff we were talking about last night, I mentioned my strong belief that Jeb 2.0! had gotten a new hairstyle, something that seemed lost on the purportedly close-watching pundit class. TPM colleagues were not convinced. But with the exception of David Kurtz, who has little excuse, I’ve been at this much longer. And I think reader response and photographic evidence bears me out.
We got a number of TPM Reader emails noting the difference. But I think TPM Reader MR has the most detailed breakdown …
I find it hard to know quite what to say about this debate. It was chaotic and disordered. Lots of candidates called each other liars. Donald Trump used variations of the actual word numerous times. Our initial count from the rough transcript has Trump saying “single biggest liar” twice, “this guy lied” twice and “why do you lie” no less than three times. Rubes said Cruz “lies” a handful of times. And that was just the start of it. I don’t think there’s ever been a presidential debate where so many of the candidates have called each other liars so many times. At some moments the trash talking and chest-puffing and general drama got so intense I thought this might be a fair approximation of West Side Story if you’d written it about two battling country clubs, the plutocrats versus the plutocrat flunkies.
10:02 PM: Trump: “We are not being treated properly.”
10:15 PM: Ben Carson is truly stupid on almost every policy issue.
10:17 PM: If Jeb would have brought this Jeb earlier in the election he might still be in the election.
10:18 PM: What hasn’t gotten a lot of discussion in the national political conversation is that Trump is in many ways a natural candidate for South Carolina. He’s obviously not an evangelical. But South Carolina has been ravaged by globalization with numerous light industry jobs disappearing in recent decades. The Mexico and China bashing has a ready audience there.
10:24 PM: I think there’s a decent argument that Donald Trump does love eminent domain.
10:27 PM: Trump to Cruz: “You are the single biggest liar.”
10:28 PM: This is a thing of beauty.
10:29 PM: The Berlin Wall.
10:32 PM: This is certainly the most time the word “liar” has been used, especially in the vocative, in any debate ever.