The New Schumer Precedent
February 17 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, Party Politics, The Left, US ConstitutionReally, now…
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WSJ 2/17/2016
Supreme Court vacancies tend to showcase political consistency—or lack thereof. So it is amusing to watch how thoroughly New York Senator Chuck Schumer has been reduced to self-parody as he tries to excuse his 2007 demand that Democrats reject, sight unseen, any of George W. Bush’s nominees “if—God forbid—there is another vacancy under this President” during the last 18 months of his Administration.
In a post on Medium, the Majority-Leaderin- waiting now claims that his 2007 speech was little more than a suggestion that “Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact up. There was no hint anywhere in the speech that there shouldn’t be hearings or a vote.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Schumer, his own words were on the record and are online. Consider this somewhat less than subtle hint: “I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.” The emphasis is Mr. Schumer’s in his prepared remarks.
Mr. Schumer never said that nominees were entitled to a hearing much less an up-or-down vote, and along with then-Senator Barack Obama he joined a filibuster of now-Justice Samuel Alito in 2005. Among the Senator’s major themes at the time was that the confirmation hearings process is of “limited usefulness” and “often meaningless.”
Mr. Schumer’s anything-goes approach also included a call to “reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.” If he were consistent, Mr. Schumer would now be demanding that Mr. Obama nominate, in the name of “balance,” a like-minded conservative jurist to replace Antonin Scalia. At least Mr. Schumer is entertaining.
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