We have a post up by Ohio State constitutional law professor Peter Shane. It’s really a good resource if you want to know how many different ways the Republicans can obstruct the Democrats’ efforts to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. It basically maps out which tactics the GOP can use at different points in the timeline and what kinds of things the Democrats can do in response.
It’s also a simple lament that things have come to this point where institutional norms have completely broken down. Here’s a taste:
What is happening is a dispute over norms – some call them “conventions” – which are the unwritten, but mutually accepted ways of doing business that allow parties and institutions in conflict to work together in spite of conflict. Thirteen years ago, I wrote a law review article decrying what I saw then as a dangerous corrosion in those institutional norms that had enabled frequently divided government to nonetheless achieve great things in the United States between the end of World War II and the late 1970s. Matters since then have grown much worse.
A president with 11 months to go in his term could reasonably expect, based on well-established norms, that the act of nominating a Supreme Court Justice will be viewed as a routine and wholly appropriate fulfillment of his duties. A president could reasonably expect the nominee to receive a hearing. Senate opposition on grounds of judicial philosophy rather than credentials might well be predictable also, but the legitimacy of a nomination and the expectation of a full hearing would seem to be unquestionable. The assertion by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) within hours of Scalia’s death that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President,” immediately threatens to explode these norms.
If the Republicans make good on that threat, how could the interbranch conflict become more inflamed? Here are three possibilities, each fit for an Aaron Sorkin screenplay:
If you want a heads up on what’s coming (or could be coming) you’ll definitely want to read the whole thing.
A fine piece and really way ahead of the curve on where this is all going, although I don’t like the obligatory recitation that both sides have equally done their part to ruin the various “conventions” that allowed our ramshackle constitutional government to function. I see every move towards such destruction as emanating from the radical party, the Repubs.
But blame hardly matters, I suppose. The point here is that people have to start understanding that the system’s failure and dysfunction is only getting worse, and will now involve a stalemate over the nation’s highest court. Repubs will not seat Hillary’s nominee any more than they will seat the hated Obammy’s nominee. Hillary Hatred will be up and running the day after the election. And if Trump manages to win, then that just means the end of another norm, the filibuster, for good or ill.
Note also that no Dem is willing to start talking about the longer term implications of the Repubs’ latest act of political extremism and the escalation of their struggle to wreck the government.
The question is exactly where the plutocrats think this is going to take their beloved capital markets, and, if they have any such concerns, whether they have any power to de-escalate the situation. Where will all that money flee to, and how will it be able to protect itself?
Presidential “systems” tend to fail. Ours hasn’t, but it seems it is just a matter of time. The epitaph for the nation will be “It was not able to survive the rise of the ‘conservative’ movement”.
The scary question is: are the conservatives doing this deliberately? Generally when gridlocked presidential systems fail, the outcome is a right-wing coup. Is this part of a deliberate long-term strategy?
Is this part of a deliberate long-term strategy?
Yes, yes it is!
OK,
That just was not a very good article. Basic ‘both sides are responsible’ BS.
.
ot:
OUR ELDERS CONTINUE to be punished by Jim Crow.
63,756 Reasons Racism Is Still Alive in South Carolina
That’s the number of minority registered voters who could be blocked from the polls by the state’s new voter ID law.
By Ari Berman
……………………..
Larrie Butler, a 90-year-old African-American man, was born in Calhoun County, South Carolina, at a time when the South was segregated during Jim Crow. He moved to Maryland after serving in the military and attending college, but returned to South Carolina in 2010. He got a voter-registration card and voted in the state in 2010.
In 2011, South Carolina passed a strict new voter-ID law requiring a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot. When Butler went to the DMV to switch his driver’s license from Maryland to South Carolina, he was told he needed a birth certificate to confirm his identity. But Butler was born at home, when there were few black hospitals, and never received a born certificate. When he went to the state Vital Records office to get a birth certificate, they said he needed to produce his Maryland driving records and high-school records from South Carolina. After he returned with that information, he was told he needed his elementary-school records, which Butler couldn’t produce because the school was closed. So instead he found his census record, which was not accepted because his first name in the census, Larry, did not exactly match the name he’d used for his entire life, Larrie. He was told to go to court and legally change his name at 85 years old, in order to obtain the birth certificate required to get a driver’s license in South Carolina and also be able to vote.
“It made me feel terrible,” Butler said.
At a certain point, it’s not about parliamentary procedure. It’s about how actions impact a political brand. There will be a chess game on procedure, but a meta-chess game on public perception. In this, democrats probably have the upper hand, in that the republican’s range of actions is severely curtailed by the extremism of their base
a meta-chess game on public perception. In this, democrats probably have the upper hand,
And that’s exactly why Obama and DEMs should stick to the meta-game and dismiss all the petty, etc. moves of the GOP.