It’s looking like the Washington Post’s years-long revenue bleeding might have finally cost them their partisanship. At least a little bit. Is it possible that the famously liberal rag is actually broadening their politics in the hopes of attracting some fresh readers? That would explain why they let today’s opinion piece by David Bernstein escape into the ether. Mr. Bernstein pulled yet another rug out from under all the liberal arguments for demanding the Senate facilitate Scalia’s replacement to the Supreme Court which are already barely balancing on a wobbly three-legged soapbox.
In his piece, Mr. Bernstein correctly reminds everyone that not only can the Senate choose to ignore whatever Marxist Obama is going to nominate to destroy the Constitution, but there is actually Senate precedent to prohibit court nominations in a president’s last year in office. That charge was even driven and past by the Democrats. How’s that for not knowing your own history?
In 1960, fearful of an outgoing Dwight Eisenhower stacking the court with Republicans, according to Mr. Bernstein, the Dems passed Senate Resolution S.RES. 334. It prevented Ike from using a recess appointment to –at least temporarily- get his guy on the bench until the Senate could vote in the new session. President Obama has stated that he wouldn’t use a recess appointment, basically playing a game of SCOTUS chicken with the Republican-led Senate.
But that’s not quite the point. Let’s forget, for the moment, that nowhere does the Constitution require the Senate to expedite any Supreme Court nomination, or even vote choose on it. Let’s forget that, as Senator Cruz correctly pointed out (and almost everyone else got wrong), there is no precedent for a president nominating a candidate in the last year of his presidency. Let’s even forget all the hypocrisy of leftist leaders like Chuck Schumer decrying the Republican threat of not voting on whomever Obama will nominate only a few years after making the very same threat about President Bush’s selection.
The Democrats truly have no leg to stand on in this argument. There is precedent within their own party history to prevent lame duck presidents making decisions that would affect the country decades after they leave power. The only difference is, this time they have a golden opportunity to brutalize America for decades with this judge. Not just because they’ll appoint a liberal judge but because they will replace the longest running conservative thorn in their delusion with a ideological polar opposite.
What a 180! So naturally it makes perfect sense- in the liberal fun house of a brain- to make a 180 in their convictions about court nominations.
