Explosive New Polls Show GOP Poised To Lose Senate Seats If They Block Obama SCOTUS Nominee
Two new polls of Ohio and Pennsylvania revealed that voters are outraged over the Republican plan to block President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. The anger is so strong that it could cost the GOP in bent Senate seats in both states.
According to PPP:
-Strong majorities of voters- 58/35 in Ohio and 57/40 in Pennsylvania- think that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled this year.http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/22/republicans-poised-lose-senate-seats-ohio-pa-block-obama-scotus-nominee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed &utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Polit icus+USA+%29
What’s particularly noteworthy about those numbers- and concerning for Portman and Toomey- is how emphatic the support for approving a replacement is among independent voters.
In Ohio they think a new Justice should be named this year 70/24 and in Pennsylvania it’s 60/37.
Those independent voters are going to make the difference in these tight Senate races, and they have no tolerance for obstructionism on the vacancy.
-Voters are particularly angry about Senators taking the stance that they’re not going to approve anyone before even knowing who President Obama decides to put forward.
By a 76/20 spread in Pennsylvania and a 74/18 one in Ohio, voters think the Senate should wait to see who is nominated to the Court before deciding whether or not to confirm that person.
Toomey and Portman are out of line even with their own party base on that one- Republicans in Pennsylvania think 67/27 and in Ohio think 63/32 that the Senate should at least give President Obama’s choice a chance before deciding whether or not to confirm them.
-This is an issue that really does have the potential to make Portman’s and Toomey’s lives even harder this fall if they don’t change their tune.
In both states the numbers are identical
- 52% of voters say they’ll be less likely to vote for either Portman or Toomey this fall if they refuse to confirm a replacement for Justice Scalia no matter who it is, compared to only 25% who say taking that stance makes them more likely to vote for them.
In both cases the numbers reinforce how perilous it is with independents for Portman and Toomey to take the position that they’re not confirming someone no matter what
- in Ohio 59% of them say that makes them less likely to vote for Portman to just 15% more likely, and for Toomey it’s 55% of independents less likely to vote for him based on that stance to only 24% more inclined to support him.
that was June before the election, we're still February
Repugs refusing to consider ANY and ALL yet unknown nominess risks losing the Senate.
If they succeed in blocking, SCOTUS is hung until 2017, AND the Repugs can't win the WH (they won't), then a Dem Pres will still nominate. The big risk that that a Pres Hillary would nominate a center-right person who would tip the court right, so Hillary could say "I get things done" (no matter who gets ed, like Iraq, Libya, college debtors, medically bankrupted Americans)
2007 also had Schumer saying the same thing 18 months before the election.
And now is also well within the political campaign season that Biden talks about in that video.
yeah, the schumer quotes are by far the most damning as far as Dems are concerned, regarding this process
by the time biden was making his speech the primaries were already over if i'm not mistaken
They both would do the same thing - refuse to approve any nominee.
mind reading?
Did the Dems REFUSE to consider ANY and ALL nominees, sight unseen?
Rigthwingut defense of Repugs: the Dems are just as bad (meaning there's nothing good about the Repugs to defend, and Repug supporters know it)
some of them, yes. Even though they never actually had the opportunity.
they, they didn't
Obama's will give the Repugs their opportunity in a couple weeks. Strict obstructionism says they will continue as from Jan 2009.
Republicans seize on Biden quote, which does them no good
Republicans were deliriously happy. After all, if Joe Biden himself had called for a comparable blockade, endorsing a delayed process in a presidential election year, GOP senators could simply say they were honoring the standard the vice president created. It was, the right cried out in unison, the “game changer” they were waiting for.
Except, it really wasn’t.
For observers who appreciate details, some obvious troubles probably jumped out right away. For example, in 2016, there’s an actual vacancy on the high court, while in 1992, there was not. There’s a qualitative difference between a hypothetical set of cir stances and actually implementing a brazenly partisan scheme that’s never been attempted in American history.
There’s also the matter of the date: Biden’s 1992 speech was delivered at the end of June, not long before Congress’ summer recess. That’s not at all similar to declaring in mid-February that a Supreme Court vacancy must go unfilled for a year.
But more important still is the part of the 1992 speech that went overlooked. ThinkProgress noted that,in the same remarks,
Biden added that if the then-Republican president “consults and cooperates with the Senate,
or moderates his selections absent consultation,
then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justices Kennedy and Souter.”
That doesn’t sound like a call for a partisan blockade against any and all nominees, sight unseen. It sounds like the opposite.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
So all y'all's "Dems are just as bad as the Repugs" is pure bull , as always. The Repugs have been, are MUCH WORSE.
Georgetown University Law Professors Slam Late Justice Antonin Scalia
“Scalia was a giant in the history of the law, a brilliant jurist whose opinions and scholarship profoundly transformed the law,” Dean William Treanor said in the announcement, noting that Scalia had returned to the school to talk and answer questions multiple times over the years.
“He cared passionately about the profession, about the law and about the future, and the students who were fortunate enough to hear him will never forget the experience. We will all miss him.”
But two professors took issue with the announcement.
One of them, professor Mike Seidman, sent a letter to the faculty noting that he disagreed with the announcement but noting that “norms of civility preclude criticizing public figures immediately after their death.”
However, two days later, professor Gary Peller decided it was time to criticize Scalia in an email to students and fellow faculty.
“I am not suggesting that J. Scalia should have been criticized on the day of his death, nor that the ‘community’ should not be thankful for his willingness to meet with our students. But he was not a legal figure to be lionized or emulated by our students.
He bullied lawyers,
trafficked in personal humiliation of advocates, and
openly sided with the party of intolerance in the ‘culture wars’ he often invoked.
In my mind, he was not a ‘giant’ in any good sense,” said the liberal professor.
“I imagine many other faculty, students and staff, particularly people of color, women and sexual minorities, cringed at headline and at the unmitigated praise with which the press release described a jurist that many of us believe was a defender of privilege, oppression and bigotry, one whose intellectual positions were not brilliant but simplistic and formalistic.”
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1973...ntonin-scalia/''
Last edited by boutons_deux; 02-23-2016 at 11:31 AM.
Justice Scalia Explains Why Leaving His Seat Vacant Is A Terrible Idea
explained the adverse impact of that losing a justice has on the court. Here is the key passage from Scalia’s memo, noted by a former law clerk for Scalia, Ian Samuel:
On the Supreme Court, however, the consequence is different:
The Court proceeds with eight Justices, raising the possibility that, by reason of a tie vote, it will find itself unable to resolve the significant legal issue presented by the case.
Thus, as Justices stated in their 1993 Statement of Recusal Policy: “[W]e do not think it would serve the public interest to go beyond the requirements of the statute, and to recuse ourselves, out of an excess of caution, whenever a relative is a partner in the firm before us or acted as a lawyer at an earlier stage.
Even one unnecessary recusal impairs the functioning of the Court.” (Available in Clerk of Court’s case file.)
Moreover, granting the motion is (insofar as the outcome of the particular case is concerned) effectively the same as casting a vote against the pe ioner.
The pe ioner needs five votes to overturn the judgment below, and it makes no difference whether the needed fifth vote is missing because it has been cast for the other side, or because it has not been cast at all.
Here, the Republican Senate is essentially creating an eight person court for an entire year or longer, something that would create the problem Scalia warned about in every single case heard by the Court until his replacement is confirmed.
More broadly, Republican Senators are intent on turning the 2016 presidential election into a referendum on the Supreme Court. Scalia also spoke out against the politicization of the appointments process.
“I am not happy about the intrusion of politics into the judicial appointment process,” Scalia said in 2010.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...terrible-idea/
The HEAVILY biased, politicized shill for VRWC/1%/BigCorp was against politicization of SCOTUS when the politicization didn't go to the extreme right.
Georgetown law profs demand trigger warnings:
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/...mand-remedies/Citing the widely debated controversy at Yale last year, they wrote that having to endure criticisms of Scalia is “clearly the most grievous imaginable macro-aggression against all conservative students and faculty.” As a result, they argued, “this incident calls for remedies at least as substantial” as the ones imposed at Yale, “and an equally powerful statement” from the dean denouncing the “micro-aggression.”
So you think those Democrats were right?
I don't.
So you think those Democrats were right?
I don't.
what Biden said was not absolute, was said just before the summer recess late June, not in Feb, and most of all:
But more important still is the part of the 1992 speech that went overlooked. ThinkProgress noted that,in the same remarks,
"Biden added that if the then-Republican president “consults and cooperates with the Senate,
or moderates his selections absent consultation,
then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justices Kennedy and Souter.”
Neither do I. Try getting the partisan hacks to cop to criticizing the GOP for it is not something I will hold my breath for.
Very good point of difference.
I don't recall a letter by the Judiciary Committee saying "we won't even schedule a hearing" or the Senate leader saying "I wouldn't even meet the nominee".
It is an opening gambit, that not even they believe. Part of a negotiating tactic.
Silly, but how the game is played. The GOP is trying to maximize what they can get out of it, i.e. a candidate as conservative as possible.
Feel sorry for the punching bag that gets the nod.
"Feel sorry for the punching bag that gets the nod."
.... won't even have to appear, won't be called.
If he or she does appear, voted down, Barry should another one, even more lefty, and more lefty, and more lefty.
Obviously, Republican cons utional "principle" on this matter would be eroded some if Obama shocked the world and nominated one of their guys.
I still think the President could make incredible hay against the Republicans if he floated the name of an uber conservative judge as a potential nominee and let the Republicans sweatily walk back their insistence upon no hearings.
... making hay vs. handing the VRWC/1%/BigCorp another 5 - 4 court for many years? no.
He could float a name (and give the media a basis to at least ask the question) without actually nominating an uber conservative judge.
a bait'n'switch? bait a Bork and then switch to a Nortorious RBG? Just Do It.
A White House invitation for U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley to discuss the current U.S. Supreme Current vacancy with President Barack Obama has so far gone unanswered.
Turning down the meeting would represent a break in protocol from two previous high court vacancies during Obama’s presidency, when the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as the Senate majority and minority leaders attended Oval Office meetings.
works if senators are willing to have a conversation.
“Early this week, we extended an invitation to Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy to join President Obama in the Oval Office for a consultative meeting of filling the Supreme Court vacancy,” a senior White House official told the Des Moines Register. “We have not heard back from Chairman Grassley.”
I suspect for the Iowa Republican, the calculus is pretty straightforward: Grassley has no intention of ever doing his duty, so there’s no real point in going to the Oval Office to discuss whether or not Grassley is going to take his responsibilities seriously. He’s already decided not to.
But let’s recognize this for what it is: a scandal. For the first time in American history, a Senate majority party not only intends to leave a Supreme Court vacancy in place for a year, Republicans are also imposing a blockade on the cons utional process itself.
As of yesterday, Grassley won’t talk to the president about potential justices, and at least five GOP senators – including the Senate Republican leadership – said they won’t even talk to the president’s nominee if he or she showed up at their offices for a visit.
Nothing like this has ever happened in the American experience. That’s not hyperbole; it’s a demonstrable fact.
As Republican politics reach new levels of radicalization, the intensity of their maximalist tactics has arrived at an unprecedented and scary point.
The Republican Party may very well be broken, but just as alarming is the fact that the GOP is tearing the Senate down with it.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Will voters hold Repugs accountable? , no. Nearly every Repug involved is in a safe state, a voter-suppressed state, a gerrymandered district, and they are all slave and red states. Repugs are only accountable to their donors.
The truth is, Republicans would likely dodge that question by calling it academic until there's an actual nominee, but it would be a useful exercise (I think) to test just how committed they are to this notion that a lame duck President should not nominate -- no matter what -- in an election year.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
