Looks like Republicans get the last laugh over Senate (non)confirmation of presidential appointments

Former Clinton administration deputy chief of staff Maria Echaveste was named yesterday by President Obama to be our new ambassador to Mexico. The good news for her is that -- as a nonjudicial appointee, not subject to post-"nuclear option" majority vote -- she shouldn't feel any rush about packing.

by Ken

Goodness knows, most Democratic pols aren't good for much, but set them alongside their Republican counterparts and, well, we're looking into an absolute void. At this point it's hard to think of any exception to the general principle that all Republicans are vile, worhless filth, of no possible human use except as landfill. The fact that any American who isn't part of he Thieving Predator Class (or their fluffer wannabes) would consider for even a second votiing for any Republican for any elective office testifies to the final moronification of the country.

Today's case in point: an update on the Senate confirmation process in the post-sort-of-nuclear-option era. The Washington Post's "In the Loop" team reports today, in an item called "Dribs and drabs":

Back when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unleashed the nuclear option in November 2013, keen observers, such as our colleague Paul Kane, predicted that Democrats might rue the day — they might get their long-blocked judicial nominees confirmed, but precious few others.

Turns out that was right. The Dems have gotten their judges, but furious Republicans retaliated by blocking or delaying action on other nominees, reducing a steady confirmation flow down to a trickle.

This week, the Senate did manage to approve 26 nominees for various posts, including key ambassadorships, with 11 confirmed just before the Senate recessed for the elections.

More than a hundred other nominees will have to hope they’re part of a tiny group that can get through during the lame-duck session in November — or maybe next year, though then they’ll have less than two years in their jobs. (On the other hand, President Obama’s judges will be wearing those robes for decades.)

The "Loop"-ers go on to enumerate the trickle of confirmees, starting with three ambassadors (Mark Lippert for South Korea, Kevin O'Malley for Ireland, and Adam Scheinman as "special rep to the president for nuclear nonproliferation"), followed by a sprinkling of deputies and assistants in cabinet departments and other federal agencies.

Possibly for laughs, a couple of new ambassadorial appointments are chronicled: for Mexico, Maria Echaveste ("a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and before that a senior Labor Department official"); and for India, Richard Rahul Verma ("a former foreign policy adviser to Reid and assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs").

To play a quick round of my favorite game, If The Shoe Was On the Other Foot, if the situation was reversed and Republican nominees had so much as a gentle glove laid on them, the Great Right-Wing Noise Machine would be up in arms. The Fox Noisemakers would be screaming at full volume, and George Will would be strutting his stuff as the Most Dishonest Life Form in the History of Planet Earth by screeching about the Death of Democracy as Caused by the Tyranny of a Crazed, Wildly Overreaching Liberal [sneer!] Congress. We would be hearing about it 24/7, no doubt with limitless heart-rending video vignettes -- most of which would turn out to be faked -- of Ordinary Americans victimized by those demonicallly power-drunk Senate Dems. Polls would soon show that Americans overwhelmingly blamed the evil Dems for destroying America.

My own fantasy in the matter of Senate confirmation of executive appointments is a secret pact to the effect that no nominee who has support from the Senate Republican caucus will ever again be confirmed for any post. Ever.

Of course Dems don't have the moxie to try anything like that, and probably for good reason -- the Great Right-Wing Noise Machine would crucify them. But as anyone who has, for example, been following Howie's coverage of the reelection bid of that next-to-useless pile of protoplasm Maine Sen. Susan Collins knows, even if the candidate had any virtues -- and I'm prepared to concede that our Susie has some very, very modest ones -- they become irrelevant when it comes to election to Congress, where all Republican members of both the Senate and the House now accept the blood oath of loyalty required of them. Vote for Susie and you might as well be electing one of those infernal piles of Senate sludge from Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Idaho, et al.

The one small note of consolation, as sounded in the "Loop" item, is that over time, and with the change in the Senate rules, a whole lot of federal judges have been seated who will be very different from the sociopathic crud packed onto the bench during Republican administrations, and in particular that of the late unlamented Bush regime. Of course Republican presidents have learned the trick of naming judges more or less as they graduate grade school, to ensure that they can perpetrate more than a lifetime's worth of judicial mayhem. Whereas the Obama appointees, by the time they're actually seated on the bench, are closing in on nearing retirement age.

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