No votes for Judges?

[rambot]

GOP Melts Down As Dick Durbin Uses Their Tactics For Advancing Biden Judges

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had full-blown meltdowns on Thursday after Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) held votes on two of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees without allowing debate on them, saying he was simply following the “new precedent” established by Republicans when they did the same thing to Democrats, twice.

I think it was a stupid precedent to set but it was set. I think it's poison to the judicial system.

But all that said, does that mean Democrats should NOT do it? How would we know Republicans would go back to following proper procedures if they get voted back in? We don't.

How to solve these issues then? Should they be codified into law? I think the BEST option would be for the next president to simply remove ANY AND ALL judges who were put in through this manuever and start over following procedures....but I doubt that would happen.

 

[Pommer]

From yon article:
“Durbin appeared to completely blindside Republicans by moving straight to votes on two U.S. District Court nominees, Mustafa Kasubhai and Eumi Lee, without opening up the floor for discussions on them. Both nominees had two previous hearings and had been debated. But typically the panel would still allow for more discussion in what was their confirmation hearing.”

This doesn’t confirm the nominees but just allows their nominations to go to the full Senate for their votes.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Cotton got so mad he started talking about himself in the third person.
“Mr. Cotton says the chairman needs to rethink his decision,” said Cotton, as his name came up in the roll call. “That’s what Mr. Cotton says.”

 

[The Barbarian]

I can see why Cotton was so angry. If democrats start taking moral instruction from republicans, the republic is in danger. I suppose both sides could decide to agree to set rules to always require debate, but then that would mean a level playing field for all judicial nominees. And that would be unacceptable to republicans.

 

[Nithavela]

Why the need for debate anyway? Parties are gonna vote on the judges along party lines anyway. They'd do the same for the best, most impartial judge in the world or a sack of potatos. The only thing they need to know is which party introduced the judge, and they vote for the judges of their party and against the judges of the opposition party.

 

[The Barbarian]

Why the need for debate anyway? Parties are gonna vote on the judges along party lines anyway. They'd do the same for the best, most impartial judge in the world or a sack of potatos. The only thing they need to know is which party introduced the judge, and they vote for the judges of their party and against the judges of the opposition party.

Didn't use to be that way. But that was when there were two parties with people who could work together.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Didn't use to be that way. But that was when there were two parties with people who could work together.

They would be more collaborative and work together legislatively...and were certainly more civil, but I think the way the Judicial confirmation process went was still very much a partisan voting pattern...that's been something of a staple (at least during my time)

And if you look at the numbers

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45622

(sorry, it's not light reading for a sunday morning by any means)

But the key snippets:
Influence of Unified and Divided Party Control
In general, both a greater number and percentage of circuit and district court nominees were confirmed during Congresses in which the party of the President was the same as the majority party in the Senate.19

U.S. Circuit Court Nominees
During Congresses in which there was unified party control (i.e., the party of the President and the majority party in the Senate were the same),20 the median number of circuit court nominees confirmed was 19, and the median percentage of nominees confirmed was 81.1%. In contrast, during Congresses in which there was divided party control (i.e., the party of the President was different than the majority party in the Senate),21 the median number of circuit court nominees confirmed was 16, and the median percentage of nominees confirmed was 59.8%.


There hasn't really been a huge swing in that regard.

The pattern's been pretty consistent dating all the way back to Carter's time in office.

One notable pattern that has changed, is that there's been a pretty noticeable uptick in people pushing the same nomination multiple times in order to get them confirmed.

In terms of people "feet dragging" to slow down the nomination process as a way of quasi-obstruction, it would actually appear that we're trending back toward less of that happening (though the times where it does occur have become more widely covered by more mainstream media outlets...as to where back in 90's, you probably weren't hearing about it unless you were one of those few people who watched CSPAN)