"I'll warrant that Castle Bush couldn't nominate a conservative, strict-constructionist justice to save their lives. It just isn't in them."
IMHO...I think they could nominate them...but it's gonna depend on who is the Chair of the Senate Judiciary starting in January as to whether they get approved.
What you what is an Intentionalist. A Strict Constuctionist is a Textualist in sheep's clothing.
Spectre already said they will give a vote to whoever bush sends. period.
We conservatives need to get over it.
Spectre it seems, has almost NOTHING to do with getting a guy confirmed. What has a lot to do with it, is the commitee ratio balance and rules for cloture in the Senate, and not much of anything else... It has been so since we won the first presidential election in 2000, by such a narrow margin. Winning by a larger ration does not alter the Senate rules, cloture thresholds or committee staff balance.
Spectre will very likely chair the judicial committee with an 11/8 split in our favor, so even IF he votes with the dems, we will get our floor vote. End of discussion. Fighting over Spectre is a useless waste of our finite amount of political capitol. With out a big traumatic confrontation, Bush will be able to nomimate, and the committee will both review background, make a recommendation, and send the guy or gal to the floor for an up or down vote.
If the dems block cloture, the nomination will fail, if they don't the nomination will pass. If we don't change the the threshold for cloture, it will be set as it is, sixty. If we do change it, it will go to 55 or so, and we might come to rue the day we do thus... Later... when WE are the minority party wanting to block a bill or nominee.
But that's our political system and unless we give Bush a 64 seat senate THAT is exactly how it will stay. Re-electing Bush did not give us enough power to overthrow the current numerical balance of power in the Senate. We now have a majority without having to send our Veep over there to take attendance and vote our will on matters.
I am still wondering if we should or should not, change the rules on cloture... a knife that can and will... cut both ways. I wish there was a way that we could make cloture different on nominees only, instead of both nominees and new legislation.
Regardless Spectre is NOT where we will win or lose this.
Rush Limbaugh talked about this for quite a while today and made it rather clear... Spectre won't be our problem on the nominee question...
committee ratios and cloture thresholds are where we will fight this battle and win, lose or draw... we will have to live with it.
I wish that changing one man would flip the turn of events... but it won't. The bush administration seems to be letting ol' Arlen... 'twist in the wind' for a while.
I guess we will get to test the new system first... on a new A.G.