… People, can we have some real talk about Bork? Like, can we get into some Real Nerd Shit right here?
Even though Saint Ronnie appointed him, Robert Bork didn’t get confirmed because Robert Bork was a nightmare horror show who was so awful that six Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against him.
Robert Bork didn’t get confirmed because he was the person who carried out the Saturday Night Massacre and fired an independent prosecutor at noted crook Richard Nixon’s behest.
While he was an appellate judge, Bork made clear that he didn’t really believe there was a right to privacy, particularly where icky gay people were concerned. He liked fucking poll taxes. POLL TAXES.
He was a monster and deserved not to be confirmed. Also too, the Senate turned around and confirmed ego-hound Anthony Kennedy right after that, so shut up about Democrats being obstructionist, you fucking babies.
…
It’s not so much that as I model Senate behavior in terms of how it will maintain the balance of power overall. The Senate is a weird animal, and is prone to calculated moves that keep from rocking the boat too much. I sort of find them dependable when the issues at stake are about power balance, and I find them to be less reactive since they’re beholden to a different election cycle.
If Obama nominates a moderate justice (still a win, by comparison to their predecessor) five or six of the Senate Republicans could roll over to avoid making the election about SCOTUS. There are still some old-fashioned practical people on the right in the Senate (John McCain, Lindsey Graham) who understand that hitching your party’s wagon to anti-abortion and pro-SuperPAC platforms (i.e. the Scalia-clone) will doom its chances in the General. These people know that the best way to minimize radical change is to seek a compromise candidate. But barring unforseen circumstances, a compromise candidate is still going to be a win. Obama can still fuck this up by nominating another Sotamayor, but I doubt he will. I think he sees which way the wind is blowing.
As for the opinions of the non-Senator presidential candidates and people in the House? Joey, you tell them:
The writer argues that parties mobilize their bases because the swing voter pool is shrinking.
With partisan preferences increasingly cemented in the American public and a declining share of swing voters, elections are increasingly won through mobilizing party members rather than trying to persuade independent-minded or skeptical voters. That is why most politicians are reluctant to do anything that defies or demoralizes their respective voter bases.
This fact of political life explains why many Republican senators who face competitive races this year and are from liberal or moderate states wasted little time in siding with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, in declaring that they would oppose any effort by President Obama to select Justice Scalia’s successor.
It also is why many Democrats would prefer to see the president nominate someone who could energize their partisans.
“It used to be that the focus in campaigns was, How do we win the middle?” said Glen Bolger, a longtime Republican pollster. “Now it’s, How do we get more of ours out than they get of theirs out?”
If that’s the bind, it’s more evidence that the GOP has some long range 1937ish trouble brewing by fighting the SCOTUS fight.
