I gotta tell ya, I’m starting to get more than just
a little worried about Chuckie Schumer, Democrat senator from New York. The reason I say that is because Chuckie
recent took some pot shots at those Republicans who have dared to point out a speech that Schumer gave back in 2007, which called for the blocking of all
George W. Bush Supreme Court nominees, to justify their efforts to block Barry
from replacing late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He now seems to deny that he ever called for
any such thing. So is the good senator
simply suffering from political amnesia, or something a little more serious?
It was in a piece on some website called ‘Medium’,
that Schumer wrote, “Over the last couple of days, some Republicans,
embarrassed by their partisan overreach in attempting to prevent the President
from nominating a Supreme Court justice, have tried to use a 2007 speech I gave
to justify their current obstruction.” Chuckie then went on to write, “Sadly
for them, even a quick perusal of the speech shows it provides no cover and
that Leader McConnell is comparing apples to oranges.” It comes as no surprise that this is how
Chuckie would views things since the shoe is now most definitely on the other
foot.
But Schumer then went on to say, “What I said in the
speech given in 2007 is simple: Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain
voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact
up.” And he continued by saying, “There
was no hint anywhere in the speech that there shouldn’t be hearings or a vote.
Only that if after hearings and a vote, Democrats determined that the nominee
was out of the mainstream and trying to hide it, they should have no qualms
about voting no.” Now I hate to call
anyone a liar, even old Chuckie, but the truth is that his explanation doesn’t
exactly hold water, as they say.
Now while it is certainly true that he never
actually calls for avoiding hearings, it is absolutely the case that what he
was proposing was to categorically reject any new nominees that Bush might put
forward. In his speech to the very liberal American Constitution Society, Schumer was reflecting on his experience
with the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, whose elevation
heralded a conservative shift by the Supreme Court. After claiming Democrats
were “hoodwinked” by Alito and Roberts at their confirmation hearings, Schumer
lays out his proposals for how Democrats should act going forward.
He said, “For the rest of this President’s term and
if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria let me
say this: We should reverse the presumption of confirmation.” And he then goes on to say, “The Supreme
Court is dangerously out of balance. We
cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice
Ginsburg by another Alito. Given the track record of this President and the
experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court,
at least: I will recommend to my
colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee except in
extraordinary circumstances.”
Now his piece on Medium’s website notwithstanding,
it’s very clear that Schumer was not calling for Democrats to “entertain”
voting against a Bush nominee. What he
was saying is that Democrats should absolutely vote down any nominee unless
unclear “exceptional circumstances” dictated otherwise. And it’s the full text of Schumer’s speech
that further belies his claim that Democrats would only have had to decide
against a nominee after a full hearing. Much of Schumer’s speech consists of
him arguing that confirmation hearings are inherently unreliable and not a good
way to vet a candidate for the Supreme Court.
He said, “Hearings produce a lot of sound and fury, often signifying
nothing.”
And something else I recently discovered, and
something that Chuckie fails to mention, is that in August 1960, the then
Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 334, which stated,
“Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess
appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the
administration of the Court’s business.”
Each of President Eisenhower’s SCOTUS appointments had initially been a
recess appointment who was later confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats
were apparently concerned that Ike would try to fill any last-minute vacancy
that might arise with a recess appointment.
The GOP opposed this, of course, but the Democrat
majority ended up having their way, and by what was a very comfortable margin,
just as the Republican majority should have its way this time. The final vote
on the resolution then was 48 Democrats voting “yea”, 33 Republicans and 4
Democrats voting “nay.” Also, note that
President Eisenhower had recess-appointed William Brennan to the Supreme Court
in October 1956, just before the presidential election. With a winnable election coming up, Democrats
obviously didn’t want a replay. So as we
can plainly see here, Chuckie is being nothing if not more than a bit
hypocritical as well as dishonest.
But then that should really come a big a big
surprise to no one. But we might as well
get ready for his kind of political sleaze because when the Democrats regain
control of the Senate after this next election, Schumer will most likely be
running the show. And the chances of
that happening will increase, and rather dramatically so, if the McConnell ends
up wilting under what is sure to be the growing pressure to put another liberal
on the Court. Sometimes I wonder if
McConnell even wants to be in charge, he definitely doesn’t work at it. But there is little doubt that Schumer is
salivating at the prospects of running the Senate.
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