Much like his recent nomination of a Virginian who wasn't backed by that state's senators, the president's nomination of Rod Rosenstein seems to do little more than ensure that the seat doesn't get filled (or at least make that a risky proposition). You'd think that in the waning days of his presidency he'd want to fill as many positions in the federal judiciary as possible. But apparently that's not the case. Sometimes he'd just rather take part in political games.
Posted by armand at November 19, 2007 12:35 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Law and the CourtsWell, let's see -- the courts are already absolutely overrun with conservatives, and even liberal nominees of the last ten years have to pay lip service and more to textualism, since increasingly the debate's about forms of textualism rather than whether textualism as such is the best method of constitutional interpretation (much as Clinton's years basically reconfigured the debate such that left is center and right is, well, Rich Santorum), so really, in this sense, the GOP has already won. Now it's time to brace for a likely democrat president by nominating impossible-to-confirm nutjobs, letting the left shoot them down, and then relying on these instances in eighteen months when the minority GOP starts deploying all the tricks it villified when it was in the majority to -- as it did with Clinton -- restore itself as the most effective force in American history for ensuring that the "up or down vote" it claims to revere never ever ever ever happens for anyone left of, say, Kennedy. At least here the GOP takes the long view; too bad they're congenitally incapable of doing so with respect to policy.
Posted by: moon at November 19, 2007 06:19 PM | PERMALINK