SCOTUS

By PoliPundit ~ October 1st, 2005 @ 12:34 pm

James Taranto explains why Democrats can’t stop the next Supreme Court nominee:

The GOP has 55 senators, so six of them would have to vote “no” to defeat a nominee. Coincidentally, that is the number of Republicans who voted against Robert Bork in 1987. But liberal Republicans were more numerous then. Today there are just three GOP liberals, all from New England–Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine–who seem likely to vote against a too-conservative nominee. Only one Bush judicial appointee, an Arkansas district judge named Leon Holmes, has ever received a negative vote from any Republican other than the New England trio. Virtually any nominee other than Judge Holmes, then, seems assured of at least 52 votes.

The Democrats could filibuster, a dilatory tactic that allows 41 senators to block a vote. This they did in 2003-04 to prevent the confirmation of a dozen or so appellate court nominees. But in May, under threat of the so-called nuclear option–a GOP maneuver that would have changed Senate rules to abolish judicial filibusters–seven Democratic senators agreed to a compromise in which they disavowed the filibuster except in “extraordinary circumstances.”

That exception carries the potential for mischief, but it is unlikely to be realized. Five of the seven compromising Democrats come from states President Bush carried last year, as do 11 other Senate Democrats. These senators are no doubt mindful that their former leader, Tom Daschle, lost re-election in November in substantial part because of his obstruction of judicial nominees. With constituents much more conservative than Mr. Schumer’s, they are far less inclined to do the bidding of extremist groups like People for the American Way. Thus red-state Democrats voted 13-3 in favor of Chief Justice Roberts, while more than two-thirds of blue-state Democrats opposed him. Anyway, if the Democratic compromisers do dishonor their agreement, Republicans can retaliate by going nuclear, vaporizing the filibuster forever.