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Realistic Scenario Speculation Thread: What Happens After November?
Republicans are salivating at the prospects of the upcoming election. The Senate seems to be within reach, and, true to form, we have entered “do nothing” mode in hopes of winning by inertia, just like what got us over the line in 2012… er… wait…
Anyway, Republicans are sliding towards a “victory” of sorts, and if all goes well, we’ll have Mitch McConnell to navigate the media and cultural landmines for the next two years while we wait with bated breath for Democrats to squeak out another Presidential win in 2016.
At least, that should be the assumption from which we work. If 2012 taught us anything, it is that hopeful thinking brings nothing but disappointment. And while I am more optimistic than most that the country can survive even long-term Democratic dominance, we shouldn’t allow it to happen by default.
So, what do you think is likely to happen after November assuming the Republican’s deft strategy pays off? I’m not talking best-case scenario, but realistic scenario. I don’t think anyone believes Obama’s going to turn into the second coming of Bill Clinton.
What will happen with Obamacare? What will happen to judicial nominations? What will happen to the filibuster? Will Republicans be able to force damaging vetoes; on what? What is the best (again, realistic) way to set up the 2016 election? Will Republicans ever manage to stand for something? Unlike Democrats, do they need to?
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I tend to be overly optimistic, but really, if we don’t gain at least 8 seats in the Senate, I’m going to be disappointed.
But in any case, we can expect the last 2 years of Harry Reid’s tenure to be No Fun At All, and that alone will be something to be savored.
A more complete answer to the question you actually asked: I expect lots of sound & fury for the next 2 years, and stagnation. I think the only event of lasting significance would be a SCOTUS vacancy. That will be quite a show to watch, as the GOP will have (I honestly hope and believe) caught up with the left wing in viewing such appointments as the partisan winner-takes-all event that they have truly become. I honestly expect a true battle, if the GOP controls the Senate, because the President has never compromised before (not even for appearance’s sake) and won’t now. We may see a President leave office with a SCOTUS seat unfilled (not permanently, anyway.)
And why Justice Ginsberg is not retiring right this instant is anybody’s guess. If top Democrats are not pressuring her to do so, they’re nuts. Can anyone explain why she’s clinging to her seat?
She likes being a Supreme Court Justice and is still intellectually capable. She’s not really clinging to her seat. She’s just not willing to have partisan political or ideological concerns dictate her actions.
In regards to any supreme court vacancies, Obama will just keep offering up liberal jurists until the GOP controlled senate capitulates, fearing how their rejections will look in the public eye.
I think this is likely. Alternatively, he could find one highly-credentialed reasonable-sounding liberal that would make the GOP look purely political for trying to reject, especially if they are replacing a sitting liberal.
Sal, do you see it as conceivable that enough of a fight could be put on a SCOTUS nomination to keep the seat vacant? This kind of tactic seems impossible to maintain on a moderately long time frame. I wonder what kind of impact could it have on the 2016 election
I don’t think a Republican-controlled Senate would, or should, attempt to keep any vacancy on the Court unfilled for the duration of Obama’s term in office (except if the vacancy occurred with only a few months to go). My own view on judicial nominations is that presidents should be granted fairly wide latitude as far as a nominee’s jurisprudential philosophy, but that the Senate should be more willing to reject a nominee with less than stellar credentials. To illustrate this point, I would have supported the nomination of Kagan and opposed that of Sotomayor. I’d also note that if the vacancy is created by Ginsburg’s departure, even the most liberal replacement would have a negligible impact on the ideological composition of the Court. Ginsburg’s replacement is not a hill the GOP should pick to die on.
The only important thing is getting rid of Harry Reid. At least then Obama will not be able to count on Reid blocking everything. Obama won’t be able to vote “present” any longer, he will actually have to veto things. The Republicans then can pass budgets and appropriations, Obamacare fixes, etc. and let Obama make the case against it.
Republican senators, save a rarity like Ted Cruz, seem far too driven by how they are portrayed in the media to stand up to Obama in any meaningful way. No change to the filibuster, only the most unqualified of liberal judicial candidates will be challenged.
Minor changes only to ObummerCare, they’ll hope for a white house win in ’16 and even then I doubt it is going away. More likely modified to the point that it bears no semblance to the original (though that has likely already happened)
I can’t see any major legislation that might force a veto.
Mostly a whole lotta nuthin’ though frankly, I’ll take that.
They will also pass some sort of immigration legislation that will be “Gang of Eight” with a focused group name – they will sell us out on this. They simply don’t seem willing to give it up.
Look also for some pathetic discretionary spending decreases wrapped in obtuse sounding verbiage.
They are still better than the alternative. They know it. They know that we know it but if they don’t do something meaningful, they’ll have a UKIP type third party challenge.
Why? The Senate didn’t politicize the Court, the Court did that to itself by ruling too broadly on far too many controversial social issues.
The Rubicon has been crossed. The one, the only, thing I’d concretely expect from a GOP-controlled Senate is that they reject any SCOTUS nominees who are not at least to the right of Anthony Kennedy. And since Obama won’t nominate any such candidate, if that means a 2-year vacancy, so be it.
I’m being overly-optimistic here, but the best strategy would be to pass and publicly fight for a handful of legislative proposals that will pit the President (and his favorite interest groups) against the American public. For instance, make Obama have to veto:
The objective is to change the narrative: show Obama to be the entrenched obstructer of popular policy and Republicans to be the in-touch reformers. Obama’s never been put in that position, and I can’t imagine he’d be good at it.
So basically what you’re saying is that you don’t think a Republican Senate should confirm the nominee of a Democratic President? Would you apply the rule in reverse so that Republican Presidents could only get a nominee confirmed by a Republican Senate? Do you think vacancies of the federal judiciary should only be filled when a single party controls both the Senate and the Presidency?
No, I’m saying when the GOP has the Senate it should reject liberals no matter how stellar their credentials, and force the POTUS to nominate a moderate.
And the rule already applies in reverse, and has for some time now. The Democrats rejected Bork on ideological grounds, and forced Bush Sr. to nominate “stealth” candidate Souter who turned out to be a liberal.
I just want the GOP to play by the same rules the Dems have been using my whole life.
John McCain grows weary of reaching across the aisle and changes his party affiliation to Democrat. He wants PHX to be renamed Juan McCain International.
The Senate decides to unionize and they become members of SEIU.
The economy finally crashes and Obama blames the Republican controlled congress. Obama’s recovery was able to manage some growth but the evil Republicans stopped it all. The resulting turmoil will have Obama asking for 1¼ trillion stimulus. The GOP, worried about what the MSM will say, pass a Baseline pumping 1½ trillion stimulus.
The House and Senate pass legislation to repeal Obamacare. Obama refuses to sign that bill. Instead he tells congress he’ll delay the mandate 1 more year if they will fund subsidies for the federal exchanges and make illegal aliens eligible immediately. The Senate agrees.
I’d take Souter over Ginsburg, and I’d take Kennedy over either. I think that you are changing the rules a bit, Joseph.
Bork was rejected on ideological and partisan political grounds. Bork wasn’t just writing law review articles for academia in the early 70’s.
If Obama nominated, say, Janet Reno, she would have no chance.
But that’s not the criterion you set forth. You said they should reject anyone who wasn’t to the right of Kennedy. Justice Kennedy, despite his many inconsistencies, is to the right of the median when it comes to the American bar and the Federal Judiciary. Anyone to his right would be a consistent conservative. Your standard would mean that Republicans should only confirm solid conservative nominees.
Sal, a GOP majority Senate facing a liberal SCOTUS nominee would be a bit of an outlier regarding confirmation in recent history.
When was the last time a President had his SCOTUS nominee confirmed by an opposition-majority Senate?
I believe it was Clarence Thomas (before him, David Souter) and he had a pretty tough scrap.
Joseph, Kennedy, not Souter, replaced Bork: he was confirmed 97-0.
Accidental double post. I’ll simply note that Clarence Thomas was replacing Thurgood Marshall, and Souter was replacing Brennan.
Bingo.
Even a Kennedy would not get anywhere near 97 votes in this Senate.
A conservative-majority Senate should not confirm even a Kennedy. There is simply no reason to “defer to the president” or engage in a nervous, hand-wringing “good-government” impulse to get the court back to “doing its business.” The republic could (barely) survive an emptied court. It cannot survive a court of 9 Kagans.
There is no justification for thinking Kagan was better qualified. A “law professor” that published essentially nothing in her entire career? What a joke.
Yes, this topic makes me angry.
By the nomination of Bork, things were already so skewed that the ABA–not politicians, the ABA!–showed signed of partisan hackery. With his wide and impecable credentials, some still voted him “not qualified.” Ridiculous. They were mad over Watergate, but that’s not the ABA’s job. Only now (and that’s optimistic) can we expect pushback like what the left was doing back in the 80s. Yikes.
I’m aware of that. I meant that Bush, rather than nominate a solid conservative with a track record and risk a repeat of the “Borking” fiasco, chose instead to go the “stealth” route and we ended up with Souter.
“Conservative” is really a misnomer in this context. I don’t really care what a judge’s political opinions are, as long as he has a consistent track record of actually following the Constitution as it is written. If he believes in a “living Constitution” we should Bork him, no matter how qualified, even if it means the Court stays vacant for a few years.
Me too.
Or to put it another way: if you believe in a “living Constitution” you’re not qualified to be on the Supreme Court, period. I don’t care how many law degrees you have or how many years you’ve been on the bench.
I don’t think a Republican Senate will do much to advance anything without coming up with a semi-coherent policy program first.
Currently, Republican policy seems to be a defined mostly by what each member opposes and how stridently they oppose it. But the main advantage of having both houses of Congress for two years before a major presidential election is the possibility of showcasing what Republican-led government would look like.
That means coming up with a real agenda and passing draft bills which show how that agenda might get implemented. But none of this is possible without first agreeing on what that agenda looks like.
Your underlying point is still the same: a Republican Senate should oppose any nominee who would be palatable to Democrats.
And to do so would inevitably start a new trend in which Senates never confirmed nominees from a president of an opposing party, rendering an already arbitrary system of Supreme Court terms even more so.
The Constitution gives the president more power in the judicial nomination process. Trying to retroactively even the playing field would just make things worse.
I would expect a return to a regular legislative process. Bills introduced, committees marking them up and bringing them to the floor, amendments offered and voted on, conference committees formed, final votes, and finally presented to the President for signature. It astounds me how little of this we have had with Dems in control of the Senate. Reid has served as Obama’s gatekeeper, preventing bills Obama opposes from seeing the floor of the Senate, preventing Republican sponsored amendments from being voted on, and forcing all important legislation be drafted and voted on under some crisis like condition. He has made a legislative chamber completely subordinate to the executive and that is what will end.
New York Times out with a forecast. 60% chance Republicans take the Senate. Most likely outcome is they take exactly the number of seats they need for 51.
I understand that Justice Kennedy is widely perceived by many on the right to be some sort of raging lefty, but he really isn’t. He does have a tendency to write opinions which read more like philosophical treatises than legal texts and he is less consistently conservative in his opinions than we may like, but he is a conservative justice. If you take the position that a Republican Senate should block anyone not to the right of Kennedy you really are taking the position that a Republican Senate should refuse to confirm any nominee a Democratic President would put forth.
The fact that Kennedy wanted to obliterate all of Obamacare should make him sufficiently Conservative in anyone’s mind.