I suppose Chuck Schumer had to come up with something to say. You're in a tough spot - as is your party - when you declare unconscionable the other side's intention not to confirm your president's election-year SCOTUS nominee, only to have it quickly revealed that you vowed the exact same thing eight years earlier when the tables were turned.
So how do you explain it away? Why, it's apples to oranges! It's not the same! That's what he's going to try, anyway:
The Senate's No. 3 Democrat said Tuesday that his 2007 promise to block a conservative Supreme Court nominee should not be used by the GOP to justify its own plan to ignore President Obama's choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his pledge to stop a nomination by then-President George W. Bush is an "apples to oranges comparison" to the current vacancy because he would have at least entertained the nomination and voted on it.
Schumer makes that point and others in this seven-minute media availability in New York yesterday:
And just for the sake of completeness, here's what he said in 2007 about what Democrats should do in the event (it never actually happened) Bush got the chance to nominate a conservative to replace a liberal on the Court at any point during the final 18 months of his presidency (See Below)
So is Schumer right when he says this is totally different because he would have at least considered a nominee and voted? Not at all. Because the end result the Senate majority sought in each case is exactly the same - the president's nominee is not confirmed. The only thing we're quibbling about is detail, and as I asserted on Monday, that's a stupid thing to be quibbling about. Schumer's assertion in 2007 was that the Democrat-controlled Senate of that time should not confirm a new Justice who would add to the conservative numbers on the court. McConnell's assertion today is that the Republican-controlled Senate should not confirm a justice who would add to the liberal numbers on the court.
It matters not whether you entertain a nomination, hold hearings, take a vote . . . that's all theater. Neither party is willing to allow the other party's president to add to his own side's numbers on the Court if it's close enough to an election that you could plausibly wait it out.
The fact of the matter is that Schumer is busted. He pretended to be outraged by the very same thing he advocated not a decade earlier when the shoe was on the other foot. It's been said that all process arguments are insincere, and that certainly applies here. Republicans should simply explain that it would be bad for the country to add another liberal to the Supreme Court and they're not going to let Obama do that. Period. You can disagree if you want but at least you can make sense of the argument they're making.
I suppose Chuck Schumer had to come up with something to say. You're in a tough spot - as is your party - when you declare unconscionable the other side's intention not to confirm your president's election-year SCOTUS nominee, only to have it quickly revealed that you vowed the exact same thing eight years earlier when the tables were turned.
So how do you explain it away? Why, it's apples to oranges! It's not the same! That's what he's going to try, anyway:
