Neil Gorsuch for SCOTUS

you really need it spelled out?

Merrick Garland was highly qualified, the Republicans fucked him.

They have NO grounds to say "but you HAVE to approve a guy who's highly qualified"

They can make virtually any other argument they want, but the whole "well he's obviously qualified!!!" take is utter bullshit and rank hypocrisy.

are you seriously asking us to believe that when, for example, RBG kicks off and Trump appoints another Scalia clone and the Democrats fillibuster THAT guy that the GOP will just give up and say "oh well, we couldn't get this one through"?

Of course not. The party who fucked Garland will HAPPILY go Nuke over the next filibusterer, whether it's next wee or next year or three weeks before the 202 election.

The filibuster for SCOTUS nominees is already dead in every practical way, we're just waiting for the GOP to apply the rubber stamp to the death certificate.

assuming of course they manage to flip the senate in 2018, otherwise the GOP will just display rank hypocrisy and change the "rules" again.
Of course, if they flip the senate then the old timers only have to last another 21 months...

do you know WHY Harry Reid used the nuclear option though? What led up to that choice?

Why because the Republicans were doing EXACTLY to Obama's nominees that which you are now pissed about Democrats doing to Trump nominees. If the GOP had given Obama his perfectly reasonable appointments, then there would never have been a nuclear option exercised so don't act like they have some high moral ground.

As I mentioned above, it is a combination of knowing that it's already effectively dead (a filibusterer you are afraid to use does not exist) and knowing that the rank and file Democrats want Trump resisted at EVERY turn and they (Senate Dems) can't afford the perception of acquiescence.

Both parties suck, I agree.

The purpose of the filibuster is to stop egregious candidates from getting through. Now, despite our own political objections, most of the candidates--right, left, and center--put forward are not egregious.

Gorsuch is a guy many of the Democrats could vote for. If the Democrats force the nuclear option, they'll be doing it in a battle they were likely to lose anyway. And should another vacancy arise, the next candidate will not need ANY Democratic votes. In other words, Trump will be free to appoint someone the Democrats might find truly egregious.

If they don't force the nuclear option, they'll be in a better position to resist an egregious nominee the next time.

Again, the filibuster really isn't a means for the minority to simply gum up the works. It's supposed to be for keeping bad nominees out, by rallying popular attention to a bad situation. But Gorsuch isn't it. If they--as @Ancalagon put it--choose to die on this hill, they won't have any ability to resist next time around.

If RBG should shuffle off, do you really think Trump's going to replace her with another liberal? No chance in hell. It's only a question of what kind of conservative he'll appoint. If that were to come about, and Trump had no Democratic filibuster to worry about, you'd be PRAYING for someone like Gorsuch.

Flipping the Senate would require an epic wave for Dems. There are 2 R seats potentially in play and 10 D seats. To flip you'd need to not only keep all the D seats that are in play, win all r R seats in play but then add an additional R from where? You'd need bigger than '08 but in a midterm (which generally favor Republicans). Trump and the Republicans would need to maintain their current level of dysfunction/incompetence for the next 20 months which I'm not sure is possible.

Honestly I'm not sure it is possible without Trump either resigning or being removed from office (something I consider very unlikely). And in today's environment whose to say even that would do it?

In the noble high-minided world that absolutely no one in Congress actually inhabits.

Which will happen in any case. The filibuster is already effectively dead.

Doesn't matter who he nominates. He could nominate Richard Spencer and the GOP would go nuke for him. The dew is off that rose. The filibusterer, in this context, is already dead.

sums it up nicely

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...xt-democrat-will-be.html?mid=twitter-share-di

And the Demcorats should use the rules to nuke it if the Republicans filibuster.

Really it's time to reform it back to the old ways.

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...r-rules-should-change-allow-vote-neil-gorsuch

if they were going back to the old days, they would have had to do so before the cabinet appointments though.

Looks like it's going to be nuke time.

It was always ridiculous that most Democratic SCOTUS appointees would routinely get 90 Senators voting to confirm them while Republican appointees would struggle to get just over 50.

Sounds like Democrats pick better people.

Perhaps that speaks to the relative sensibility of the Dem choices, no?

Has nothing to do with it.

Republicans pick just as well.

The problem is that many Democrats only want leftists so any Republican is going to have a very hard time getting leftist Democrats to vote for them. Look at Gorsuch. He's highly qualified. He should legitimately have no problem getting 100 votes like he did in 2006. (or close to 100)

WHILE.....

The Republicans are fucking idiots and instead of doing what the Democrats do they play the whole stupid well he/she's qualified bullshit and ignore the politics.

Democrats make final voting based on politics. Republicans, to many of them, don't.

I'm not complaining about Democrats by the way. I have no problem with what they do. They play politics like a blood sport while all too often the Republicans play patty-cake with each other while looking like drooling idiots.

But Democrats do not on the whole make picks any better than Republicans. They just do a better job at supporting their guy while sticking a knife in their opponents back.

Izzat why the Republicans wouldn't even have a hearing for Merrick? Or was that somehow "different"?

They should have given him a hearing and voted him down.

Yeah, well they didn't. Merrick was qualified as well, and the Republicans even said as much as they wouldn't give him a hearing.

Or maybe the Democrats are boot licking lock steppers and the Republicans aren't of one hive mind like we saw with the healthcare bill.

So we're calling it "aren't of one hive mind" now? Because when Obama was president it was called "poor leadership".

It was poor leadership by the President and poor leadership in the House and Senate. That being said, since 2010, a lot of fresh faces came in, one of those faces was Justin Amash. Trump is currently trying to bully him into support his shitty bill and Amash isn't backing down. So yeah, I would say they aren't a hive mind. The problem is I thought Paul Ryan had more respect for those guys, but apparently he's another Bohner.

For the Amash push-back.
https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/03/trump-aide-attacks-amash-but-this-libert

On average they will be.

Actually, they were a hive mind when all of them were only voting against stuff. For seven years everybody towed the line. It's only now that the Republicans have to actually govern that the Freedom Caucus is out of step.

I'd rather them not do anything than pass shitty bills.

Based on what?

Their 70 year old political bench?

Very. He wouldn't even trigger the nuclear option when he could have rammed through hundreds of Obama nominees. He should have.

As for now... The Dems seem to want the Repubs to go nuclear as it will help their fund raising and get them out of ever having to be moderate and voting to confirm any Trump nominees. It is political posturing mixed with chicken shit butt covering for sure.

The GOP has been pandering to their conservative base and ignoring the center for at least a decade, and they've been rewarded for it. Perhaps the Dems should follow suit.

This whole business with political parties trying to stymie supreme court nominees has been going on for as long as I can remember. I was in high school when the Democrats ran their smear campaigns on Clarence Thomas and that was back in the early nineties.