Pretend you're the president, and one of your jobs is nominating judges to be approved by Congress. You've nominated several over the past year, but six of them are opposed by the opposing party, democrats, for being too conservative for the federal bench, five of them the subject of heated debate in August. Now, you disagree with the Democrats, who were in the minority, but they blocked the appointments, so you are stuck with that. Now, this was an election year, which resulted in two things - first, Congress took an extended break, and second, the Democrats took control of both Houses of Congress. Now that there's a lame-duck session of Congress, what do you do?
You resubmit the same people who were opposed 3 months ago to try to get them approved before the Senate goes to an opposition majority. Because you said that you look forward to working in a bipartisan manner, because the people have spoken and they don't want partisan politics.
I don't know how qualified or unqualified the nominees are, nor do I care at this point; I just know that this is contrary to a stated desire to eliminate partisan politics.
1 comment:
So much of what goes on the hill is done like this normally. Remember that recess appointment of Bolton to the UN? This is the status quo, unfortunately. The rules are so interesting.
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