alansmithee

But his percentage of high-level appointments being approved is lower than most previous presidents. Sure, his lower court judges are getting appointed at a high rate now (mainly because they were woefully understaffed) but his higher circuit court and appeals court choices are being blocked at a higher rate than previously seen.

This could be reversed to say why can't Dems just convince 5 Senators to shoot down the nominations. Then you wouldn't have to worry, because they went for a vote and lost. And if it was improtant that a judge appeals to American values, they would be elected with a popular vote. And we don't know if these judges aren't acceptable to America at large, because they aren't elected by a popular vote. But that's all irrelevant, what's important is that judges correctly interpret the law.

Those rules have also done harm to America in the past. Also, you can't just vote out legislators that you don't like, you can only vote on those that represent your state. And with the highly divided nature of the states in general, there really isn't that many seats up for grabs. If you live in Kansas, chances are your Senator will be Republican; live in California and you probably will be dealing with a democrat.

A judge shouldn't be judged by his ideological views, they should be judged by their willingness to adhere to law. It's not about if their views are right or wrong, it's about how they adhere to the law. And that's why many conservatives have problems with current judges: they aren't making rulings on law but on what they think is right. But that's now how things work, if something's wrong you get the laws changed through the legislative branch, not the judicial.

I'll try to address this and the "God Mode" comment at the same time, because I think they deal with the same issue. Right after the election, I asked what people thought it meant to win an election. Is it "to the winner go the spoils", or should the minority party have some say in policy? Because I saw then that there were quite a few Repubs that seemed to be thinking that they should get the "spoils" of victory. I could see their thinking-it's harder to get something off the books once it's already on, so get as much of their adjenda in place while they had the opportunity. But that inevitably will lead to times when the Repubs are out and the Dems will try to do the same thing, while simultaneously undoing the previous admin's work. This hasn't happened previously, but looking across the history of the US this form of gov't is only around 250 years old, and this is the longest period with the two same parties duking it out, so maybe it's just the inevitable concequence of a two party system. To my knowledge (and what i've been taught in my earlier poly sci classes) in most Euro countries everything is proportional, and elections focus more on parties than people. And compromise is inbuilt as the larger parties will negotiate with smaller ones to gain seats in whatever legislative branch they are using, or the smaller parties will just have their own reps to negotiate. But in America, anyone not (R) or (D) is an extreme rarity, especially on the national level. And the system itself seems to encourage a winner take all mentality, as no matter what the percentage of actual votes either party gets, only the one with the most matters.

And that's why you get Repubs throwing a fit. They feel they won, they have dual control, and they should get their adjenda through. They see Dems as obstructing their right. And they aren't worried about the future concequences of eliminating judicial filibuster because they feel that it's better to have as many judges put in now, and worry about future appointments later because a) there might not be another instance where a single party controls the executive branch and both houses of congress, and b) if there is a time when dems have the same control, there might not be the same amount of posts during the window they have control. And when you are talking about lifetime appointments, there is a great deal of lasting impact to be had from getting your appointments on.

As to where I stand, I would side with taking as much as you can now and worry about concequences later. I personally don't trust that the other side wouldn't attempt the same thing, so if you show compromise now and there's a big change in 2006 and 2008, you could be S.O.L. and have 6 years of control and nothing to show for it. To me, it seems like a variation of the classic prisoners dilema, and the only logical thing to do is to screw the other guy.