naturalplastic wrote:
I myself object because of the blatant hypocrisy of the GOP - they forced Obama to not appoint an SCJ just because it was his last year in office, vowed to stick to that as a precedent, and now are violating their own precedent and are fast tracking her in the last year of their party's POTUS.
Can you clarify what the issue is here:
As I understand it, the way the system was designed is that it is up to the President to nomiate a person for the position, then the senate can decide whether to process the nomination or not and so act accordingly.
Given that it doesn't appear to be the first time that a Senate had decided not to go ahead with the process for a nominee, resulting in their nomination lapsing (It has occurred at least 11 times, from what I can see), can you explain why this is so "troubling" in this particular case, given there was
no precedent set?
naturalplastic wrote:
On top of that some say that it looks suspicious because it looks they are fast tracking her in as weapon to overturn the election if Trump looses, and some say there is reason to think that she would twist the law to do that. Only a threat to democracy. Thats all.
While it may appear to be "fast tracked" by modern standards, it is not based on historic records (Until the 1950's\1960's, a longer time than was taken in this instance was the anomaly), which could indicate that recently the process has been needlessly hampered\delayed, rather than this instance being "fast-tracked".
As regarding claims that the speed was to use her as a "weapon", it could also be seen as a way to prevent 4:4 "ties" on any election related issues which go to the Supreme Court, providing an answer rather than a "we don't know"\"we can't decide" responce which can lead to ambiguity in future cases, or related issues. The fact that the decision may not be to some people's likings does not making it undemocratic.
I'm also curious what evidence there may be that she would "twist the law", given that I do not recall any evidence to support this was brought up during her confirmation - Deciding something in a way that some people don't like isn't "twisting the law".
Having a belief that the court must have a fixed leaning (whether conservative or progressive), and demanding it retain that balance is a threat to democracy, though, as it implies that the side supporting a fixed "lean" to the court see themselves as "superior", rather than "equal" to those with whom they disagree, and that their wishes are more important\must thus be heeded rather than impartially decided. Equally threatening to democracy would be refusing to say what a party would do if they were to win power, telling voters they would find out after the election, as this is denying people the chance to evaluate a party on what it intends to do.
Given that the process for nominations has been followed as required, with the Executive, and then the Senate having been previously selected democratically by the people (presumably) aware of the roles of each of these should a vacancy appear, it would follow that the people expect a current nominee to be approved as they had selected the same party to control each area. Had they selected different parties, then the onus would have been on the head of the Executive to nominate a person who the party in control of the Senate would approve of, not neccesarily one who his party preferred, or risk their nomination lapsing.
26 Oct 2020, 7:46 pm
