The GOP campaign to obstruct Obama judicial nominations is now complete!

Sorry, Judge Bacharach, but despite the supposed strong support of your Oklahoma home-state loons (the wackiest duo in the Senate), you won't be filling that vacancy on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals this term, thanks to the triumphant completion of the Senate Republicans' 2009-12 Campaign of Judicial Obstruction.

by Ken

It's a fantasy of mine, and unfortunately an utterly unachievable one. But off the performance, for want of a bettter word, of Republican obstructionists with regard to presidential appointees in the present administration, notably in the case of judicial nominees (something both Howie and I have written about frequently here), I've been wishing that Democrats would take a secret oath that from now on, as long as there are at least 40 Democratic votes in the Senate, no Republican presidential appointee will ever be confirmed for any job with the possible exception of White House toilet-cleaner.

It's unachievable, first, because there's that cadre of Senate Democrats who are in fact more likely to vote for a Republican appointee than a Democratic one, and are likely to bridge any gap the GOP may have in reaching the 60 votes that would be needed to reach 60 votes, assuming Senate Democratic leaders actually insist on requiring a filibuster-proof majority for those confirmations. Those Democrats would probably blither something about a president being entitled to have his own appointees confirmed, since after all it's what the people voted for. (Get the joke?)

More important, though, a strategy of blanket obstruction that only Republicans could get away with -- in just the way the Republican policy of congressional obstruction all the time, which should having Americans vowing to vote for plants and single-cell animals sooner than any Republican, has gone essentially unnoticed by the American electorate. And now, just as we've all been predicting since early 2009, when the Republican strategy began to fold, the Party of Lies has the chutzpah to scream bloody murder about what the president has failed to accomplish.

Some months ago, in a post I haven't been able to dig out, I congratulated the Senate Republicans, whose job is supposed to be to "advise and consent" on presidential appointments, on reaching the home stretch in their actual campaign to smear and obstruct. The occasion for that post was a reminder by someone that, practically speaking, all they had to do was hold the line till July and they were home free, because by that time in the final year of a president's term, senators -- at least Republican senators -- consider it too late in the term for proper consideration of Democratic presidential nominees. Of course they have a way of expecting Republican presidential nominees to be speedily approved, the way they always do, even when the appointees in question should more properly be considered for relocation to a loony bin or a zoo.

Well, it's more or less official now. The Republicans, in addition to managing some final assaults on the character of appointees who are many orders of magnitude more fit for public service than the the most nearly serviceworthy of them, have now pretty much declared the season of presidential appointment approvals over and done with. The Washington Post'sAl Kamen's has been keeping watch on the judicial-confirmation numbers. Here's his "In the Loop" report from earlier in the week.

Judicial wannabes’ chances -- slim to none

By Al Kamen

The Senate’s rejection Monday of Oklahoma Magistrate Judge Robert Bacharach for an appeals court seat sent a clear message to the three other appeals court nominees hoping for a vote on the Senate floor:
Fuhgedaboudit.

Ditto for 16 district court nominees also pending on the floor. The odds of judicial confirmations after this August recess are exceptionally slim -- at best. The Cubs will win the pennant before you’ll be putting on the black robes.

There were no nominees confirmed after the August recess when President Clinton was running for reelection in 1996 and only three when President Bush was running for a second term in 2004 -- although five got in during the lame duck.

Still, a whopping 13 Bush I nominees, including two for circuit court seats, were confirmed after the August recess in 1992, according to Senate Judiciary Committee statistics.

Four Clinton judicial picks were confirmed after the recess in 2000, when Bush and Al Gore were running, and 10 Bush II judges were confirmed during the Obama-McCain campaign, the committee reports.

So with the numbers pretty much set, let’s recap.

President Obama, who started off slowly in getting nominations up to the Senate, never fully caught up. He’s nominated fewer judges (200) than either Bush (228) or Clinton (245) on August 1 of their fourth year in office, according to committee statistics.

At the same time, the Senate has confirmed a smaller percentage (78) of Obama nominees than Clinton’s nominees (80.8 percent) and a much smaller percentage than Bush’s nominees (86.4).

As a result, Obama, with 78 vacancies, may be the first president in decades to end his first term with more judicial vacancies than when he started.

Two notes:

First, remember that the crucial vote wasn't on the Bacharach nomination, but on a motion to allow it to be voted up or down by the Senate -- which Republican senators always claim is a sacred senatorial obligation when it's a Republican president doing the nominating.

Second, left unmentioned by the lying-scum Republicans -- including Judge Bacharach's home-state senators, Oklahoma loons Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, who supposedly "strongly backed" his nomination -- is that the only reason the Senate leadership was trying to push the nomination through in July is that Senate Republicans managed to defer floor consideration of the nomination, which was made in January and "was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote," Al wrote on Monday, "with one recorded vote against him."

IN CASE YOU MISSED THE MONDAY OKLAHOMA STORY . . .

Here's Al's report:

Senate blocks Obama judge nominee

By Al Kamen

Senate Democrats failed Monday evening in an effort to end a filibuster on the nomination of Magistrate Judge Robert Bacharach to a seat on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

With 60 votes needed to break the filibuster by Republican members, the Democrats failed by 4 votes. All 51 Democrats present voted to end the roadblock to the Oklahoma judge’s elevation.

They were joined by two independents. Three Republicans -- Sens. Olympia Snowe (Me.); Susan Collins (Me.) and Scott Brown (Mass.) -- broke ranks to vote with the Democrats to allow the nomination to come to an up-or-down vote

But enough GOP senators fell in line behind a reported party decision to freeze any action now on circuit court nominations -- something that has become a Senate tradition in presidential election years.

Even Oklahoma GOP Sens. Tom Coburn and James Inhofe, who had strongly backed Bacharach, voted "present," as did Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, effectively voting to maintain the filibuster.

Bacharach, who was nominated in January, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote, with one recorded vote against him.

Monday's vote, observers said, makes it highly unlikely that the other three appeals court nominations pending on the Senate floor will be approved this year.

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