Few in media can rival Rachel Maddow's ability to project earnest indignation over the apparent perennial willingness of Republicans to engage in politics.
On her MSNBC show last night, Maddow twice mentioned the possibility of a constitutional crisis in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death, since President Obama says he intends to nominate a judge to fill the vacancy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled that Obama doing so will be a waste of time.
Republican opposition to Obama submitting a nomination for the high court with less than a year remaining in his final term represents "almost unprecedented radicalism," Maddow claimed last night, which is true only if one if willing to ignore an awkward precedent of Democrat radicalism --
MADDOW: There's nothing about having a year left in office that precludes President Obama from replacing Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.
More accurately, it is the Constitution that "precludes" this and any other president from singularly filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Regardless of Maddow's unwillingness to accept this, the president nominates but the Senate decides --
MADDOW; But we are at a very unusual time in American history where the Republican Party appears to be saying, basically with one voice, that they believe anew, for the first time in American history, that there can be no confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice in a president's last year in office and indeed that the president should not nominate a potential justice.
Since the year 1900, in a president's last year in office there have been at least eight occasions on which a presidential nominee has been put forward or voted on for the Supreme Court, including in President Reagan's last year when Anthony Kennedy was confirmed unanimously by a Democratic-controlled Senate in 1988.
Reagan's nomination of Kennedy coming after the character assassination by Senate Democrats of earlier Reagan nominee Robert Bork, whose nomination was submitted in July 1987 and rejected by a 58-42 vote in the Senate three months later. Senate Democrats deemed Bork unworthy of the Supreme Court for the high crime of previously Adjudicating While Conservative. Kennedy was nominated for the court in November 1987 and unanimously approved 97-0 the following February, with three Democrats missing the vote due to their presidential campaigns (Biden, Al Gore and Paul Simon) and remaining Democrats voting for Kennedy as penance for crucifying Bork --
MADDOW: But now the Republicans have decided, new rule! Presidents aren't allowed to do that any more. At least this president (wink wink, nudge nudge) isn't allowed to do that any more -- this president in particular, for the first time in American history, is not allowed as a president to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Apparently just because he's this president.
And not so obviously because his skin hue ain't pearly white, in case Maddow's ham-fisted insinuation passed unnoticed. Psst, Rach -- filling vacancies on the Supreme Court is a collaborative process between the president and the Senate -- really. It's right there in the Constitution if you're skeptical, Article II, Section 2 -- "and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate (emphasis mine, not the Founders'), shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court ..."
Go figure, liberals so often bray about the need for more collaboration in government, providing they're in the mood --
MADDOW: Everybody expected that the Republican-controlled Senate in 2016 or whenever it happened would be a tough environment for any Barack Obama Supreme Court nominee. Justice Elena Kagan only had five Republican senators vote for her when she was confirmed. Justice Sonia Sotomayor had only nine Republicans vote for her when she was confirmed. Nobody expected that it was going to be, you know, like it used to be back in the day when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96-3 or Anthony Kennedy was confirmed unanimously or Justice Scalia was confirmed unanimously. Nobody expected it would be like that, but I don't think anybody expected that within an hour of the announcement of Justice Scalia's death, the top Republican in the Senate would put out a statement warning that President Obama shouldn't even try to make a nomination. ...
This was the statement ... from Republican Senator Mitch McConnell -- "this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President ... The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice."
The American people do have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice -- they weighed in by the millions in the presidential election of 2012 when the American people elected Barack Obama to his second term as president of the United States with all of the powers and responsibilities that attend to that office, including appointing Supreme Court justices. The American people by a five million vote margin elected him to a second term which ends in January of next year and he's president until then.
More recently, in the 2014 midterms, Americans by the millions voted to end Democrat control of the Senate, with the GOP gaining nine seats and their strongest hold on Congress, state legislatures and governor's seats since the late 1920s. Surely at least some of those voters were more aware of the Senate's role in deciding who sits on the Supreme Court than Maddow is willing to concede --
MADDOW: The Republican position in Washington is that the Supreme Court should have a vacant seat held open until President Obama is gone from office and that is a position of almost unprecedented radicalism in American history and in American politics.
"Almost" -- except for when Charles Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the Senate, proclaimed in a July 2007 speech that the Senate "should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances. They must prove by actions, not words, that they are in the mainstream rather than we have to prove that they are not." Schumer was angered by the alleged deceit of Bush nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito during their confirmation hearings in assuring the Senate that they would refrain from judicial activism.
If it's "almost unprecedented radicalism" for a Republican Senate leader to announce that no Supreme Court nominees will be vetted in Obama's final year as president, was it actual unprecedented radicalism when a Democrat leader in the Senate declared that no Bush nominees would be considered in Bush's final year and a half as president?
Over at MSNBC, Schumer's rallying cry during the Democrat orgy of obstructionism known as the second Bush presidency doesn't qualify as "radicalism" -- it's considered Inconvenient History That Must Be Airbrushed Away.
