March 20, 2016, Supreme Dork Cork
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-People's Liberation Army), not merely content to take his opposition to the President's nominee to the Supreme Court to the steps of the Capitol, tells a Fox News Sunday morning cartoon show that he “can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association [and] the National Federation of Independent Businesses.” The Majority Leader then puts some "nuance" on the Senate's usual rule of "advise and consent" on judicial nominees.
Listen, I thought the President's decision to nominate Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to be boring. I mean, Garland is brilliant, politically moderate, and almost unassailable by Republicans... except under the crassest of circumstances. Alas, a Black Democratic President, of course, dealing with a Cracker-dominated GOP Senate, just happens to constitute the crassest of circumstances, however. That said, since McConnell was likely to block anyone the President put up, Barack might have considered settling an old score and nominating his old classmate (no, not me, though I would probably have accepted the honor, even if this is about little more than being a human piñata for a while)... but how about Columbia '83's own Miguel Estrada? Or how about nominating Republican Senators, say, starting with nicer ones like Orrin Hatch and John McCain... before eventually making Mitch McConnell block himself? Or best of all, how about a nominee who just happens to already be a sitting federal appeals court judge... and just happens to be the sister of the Republican front-runner! Oh, the fun we could have if only we weren't trying to take our damned job so seriously. No Drama Obama indeed.
Of course, now that we have the Majority Leader setting a standard on an acceptable nominee from this Senate, maybe it's time to consider handing President Sanders Clinton a spanking new Senate, that will consider... other factors...
Don't know. My view is that "there are no rules": the President was certainly not obliged to hold back from making a nomination to the Supreme Court simply because the other party controls the Senate and is likely to block that nomination, and the Senate is actually not obliged to take up that nomination. Of course, there may be a huge political price for that ginormous douche-baggery particular tactic, in the darndest of places.
And in this cosmic fight for control of the ninth black robe, we will have to see whether the checks or the balances... or, dare I say it, the voters... carry the day.