The Committee for Justice Blog has a post on the possibility of a filibuster of Judge Alito titled “Filibuster theory unconvincing.” Part of it is a rebuttal to a Red State post, but the upshot is that Curt Levey doesn’t see a filibuster congealing:
Under either scenario, Senate Democrats look like obstructionists and in a much higher visibility setting than the battle over circuit court nominees. Also, under either scenario, the Democrats ultimately lose. Fighting to the last might make the Democratic Party faithful happy. However, huffing and puffing then striking out will not present an attractive image to swing voters. Since the Democrats can’t stop Alito, it makes much more sense for them to look somewhat bipartisan, as they did with Roberts.Exactly right: the Democrats could get away with filibustering circuit court judges because it wasn’t a skirmish that a lot of Americans were giving much attention. The elevation of a Supreme Court justice is quite a different kettle of fish. The Democrats would need extraordinary party discipline to assemble the votes for a filibuster at this point, and several Dems (Nelson, Byrd, Feinstein) have already indicated they would not support the maneuver. Let’s vote already.
2 comments:
Bla bla bla, bla bla bla, bla bla bla... all this "drama" is 2nd-grade math. 55 > 45, case closed. All this analysis is rubbish. If the GOP had liked Harriet Miers any better, she'd be on the Court right now. Swing voters? High visibility? Spare us. If the Democrats had 51 votes, they'd snuff any candidate they felt like "obstructing." And if Bush had his old clout, he could have nominated a coat rack. Of course, that doesn't give 30,000 blogs anything to write about.
And yet you keep reading!
Anon: if Alito was assured a fair vote, then you're correct that there would be no drama, and nothing to blog about. The question now is whether the threshold of 40 votes can be reached by the Democrats to block cloture and filibuster the nomination.
Will they? Won't they? They might! But I don't think they will. This is called "difference of opinion" and it's the grease in a thousand keyboards.
Thanks for stopping by!
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