Don’t Let Obama Fill Scalia’s Seat
Congress has frittered away virtually every constitutional power save one: the power of the Senate to deny presidential appointments to the federal bench. If Senate Republicans expect conservatives to ever trust them on anything, then they must decline to consider Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Scalia.
There is precedent for this. In 1968, when Republicans were a Senate minority possessing only the power of filibuster, Everett Dirksen prevented Lyndon Johnson from appointing Associate Justice Abe Fortas to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren and then appointing Homer Thornbury to take Fortas’s seat as an associate justice.
If Everett Dirksen, who was only a moderate conservative holding a very weak hand, was able to thwart LBJ, who had been Senate majority leader before he was vice president and who knew all the ropes and all the tricks of the Senate, then Senate Majority Leader McConnell clearly has the power to do the same.
In fact, all McConnell and the Republican leadership have to do is to decline to consider any nominee appointed by Obama. State clearly that the Senate is exercising its constitutional power and, unlike Obama who presumes powers he does not have, that the power to confirm or deny a presidential appointment is at the heart of the Senate’s control of the Executive Branch.
This is also crunch time for any candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. The argument is quite simple: the presidency and the Supreme Court threaten to overwhelm all other parts of our constitutional system. Let the American people this November decide who will pick the next Supreme Court justice.
In fact, make this presidential election a battle about the proper role of the federal bench in our constitutional system. Those who want more power flowing to unelected and unaccountable figures in Washington vote for the Democrat nominee. Let those who think that lawyers and judges ought to run our nation support the Democrats. Let those who want power to devolve back to the people and to the states support the Republicans.
The president could, of course, make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court – an appointment that would end with the new Congress and new president – but there is no right of any president to insist that his nominees be confirmed or even considered. Any president who has acted as arrogantly and contemptuously toward the powers of Congress as Obama deserves no special consideration from the Senate at all.
The stakes are monumentally high. Winning the presidency while delivering the Supreme Court to a radical leftist majority means guaranteeing that the drift of our nation into secular humanism and unconstitutional arrogations of power to judges, federal administrators, and others who are immune to our wishes will continue toward a cataclysmic end of the America we have known.
Moreover, this is a battle that we can win, if those Republican leaders who seek our help every election cycle will stand boldly against the left. It has been a long, long time since Republican leaders in Congress have actually given conservatives anything like a political victory. If these Republicans cannot or will not do so now, then it is truly time for conservatives to abandon the Republican Party and form, instead, around a political party and movement that are serious about what happens to our nation.
The timing, in some ways, is awful for conservatives, but in other ways it is perfect. Do this one thing – let the next president and next Senate fill this seat – and we will begin to trust you again. Fail, and there is no reason for conservatives to ever trust Washington Republicans again.
Congress has frittered away virtually every constitutional power save one: the power of the Senate to deny presidential appointments to the federal bench. If Senate Republicans expect conservatives to ever trust them on anything, then they must decline to consider Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Scalia.
There is precedent for this. In 1968, when Republicans were a Senate minority possessing only the power of filibuster, Everett Dirksen prevented Lyndon Johnson from appointing Associate Justice Abe Fortas to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren and then appointing Homer Thornbury to take Fortas’s seat as an associate justice.
Senate Minority Leader Dirksen did not run the Senate or control any Senate committees. Republicans, in fact, held only 36 Senate seats, and several of these were leftists. Yet Dirksen was able to cobble together enough senators to prevent Johnson from filling a Supreme Court office during a heated election year. The left, of course, squealed and yelled, but it lost, because Senate Republicans and a handful of Senate Democrats stood firm.
If Everett Dirksen, who was only a moderate conservative holding a very weak hand, was able to thwart LBJ, who had been Senate majority leader before he was vice president and who knew all the ropes and all the tricks of the Senate, then Senate Majority Leader McConnell clearly has the power to do the same.
In fact, all McConnell and the Republican leadership have to do is to decline to consider any nominee appointed by Obama. State clearly that the Senate is exercising its constitutional power and, unlike Obama who presumes powers he does not have, that the power to confirm or deny a presidential appointment is at the heart of the Senate’s control of the Executive Branch.
This is also crunch time for any candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. The argument is quite simple: the presidency and the Supreme Court threaten to overwhelm all other parts of our constitutional system. Let the American people this November decide who will pick the next Supreme Court justice.
The president could, of course, make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court – an appointment that would end with the new Congress and new president – but there is no right of any president to insist that his nominees be confirmed or even considered. Any president who has acted as arrogantly and contemptuously toward the powers of Congress as Obama deserves no special consideration from the Senate at all.
The stakes are monumentally high. Winning the presidency while delivering the Supreme Court to a radical leftist majority means guaranteeing that the drift of our nation into secular humanism and unconstitutional arrogations of power to judges, federal administrators, and others who are immune to our wishes will continue toward a cataclysmic end of the America we have known.
Moreover, this is a battle that we can win, if those Republican leaders who seek our help every election cycle will stand boldly against the left. It has been a long, long time since Republican leaders in Congress have actually given conservatives anything like a political victory. If these Republicans cannot or will not do so now, then it is truly time for conservatives to abandon the Republican Party and form, instead, around a political party and movement that are serious about what happens to our nation.
The timing, in some ways, is awful for conservatives, but in other ways it is perfect. Do this one thing – let the next president and next Senate fill this seat – and we will begin to trust you again. Fail, and there is no reason for conservatives to ever trust Washington Republicans again.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/dont_let_obama_fill_scalias_seat.html#ixzz40DlqmxNm
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.” — Alfred talking about the Joker in “The Dark Knight”
President Obama, fresh off a shellacking in the 2014 midterm elections — in which he made himself a centerpiece, much to the chagrin of embattled Democrats — is about to embark on a scorched-earth rampage that will change the face of America forever.
Although the Harvard graduate and former professor often speaks of “teachable moments,” the president saw nothing worth learning in the outcome of the Nov. 4 elections, when voters gave Republicans their largest majority in the House since World War II and drummed the Democrats out of control of the Senate.
More, he doesn’t care that poll after poll shows a growing disillusionment with his signature policy as president, Obamacare, which now holds a record low approval rating of 37 percent. And his plan to use executive authority to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens rates just about the same — just 38 percent of Americans approve.
But Mr. Obama couldn’t care less. He doesn’t care that he has said at least 22 times in the past that he couldn’t simply create his own immigration law or ignore the statues already on the books. “Congress’s job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. … I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States,” he said in 2008.
All that talk was from before the drubbing the president took in the midterms. Now, Mr. Obama, with just two years left in office, has jettisoned his once-lofty rhetoric about the limits of presidential power.
After his party’s historic losses, he refused to even acknowledge the thrashing. Instead, he said the real lesson from that day was that Americans want everyone in Washington to “work together.”
Yet behind the scenes, the president was busy directing his team of lawyers to find real or perceived loopholes in the law — even the Constitution — in order to wave his royal scepter and instantaneously turn as many as 12 million illegal aliens into America citizens. Already he had quietly ordered the federal government to stop deporting aliens and unilaterally allowed some 60,000 “unaccompanied minors” to enter the U.S.
So he never had any intention of “working together” with Republicans, who in six weeks will control both chambers of Congress. Instead, he set off to circumvent Congress by granting amnesty to millions. Throughout, he knew that he would be, as GOP leaders said, “poisoning the well” and “waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the president announced — on Facebook — that he will be delivering a speech Thursday night detailing his intent to change U.S. law by executive fiat. The timing is deliberately designed to throw gasoline on an already blazing fire.
With just weeks to go before the end of the 113th Congress, and with funding for Ebola, a continuing resolution to keep the government open that expires Dec. 11, and a slew of others set to come up, the president has made unilateral action on immigration his top priority.
Despite his vow to work with Republicans, he will shove his executive order down their throats, intent on bringing conflict with the soon-to-be ruling party.
“That’s not the intent,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday before blaming congressional Republicans for not passing a budget. “This is not an effort to provoke a standoff here in fact, the fact that Republicans have refused to act on immigration reform is why we are where we are anyway.”
He said this with a straight face. But like the Joker, the president is intent on bringing chaos to America. In that “Dark Knight” scene, Alfred explains the Joker’s true goal: “Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Mr. Obama will say otherwise in his address Thursday night, but this is who he really is. And like the Joker, he is to be truly feared.