A majority in all 3 groups also say it was wrong not to have held hearings on Merrick Garland.
ADDED: "The survey was conducted Sept. 8-15, 2020, interviewing 1,523 adults nationwide, with a margin of error of +/-3.6 percentage points." That is, oddly enough, the poll was taken in the week before Justice Ginsburg died.
Posts
44 comments:
Interesting. I expected more of a “make the Republicans live by their own rules” response among independents (and I didn’t even bother considering Democrats).
It’s been a long time since I got to sit in a theater with popcorn and watch a movie. I have a big tub of popcorn now. This show may be almost as good! Buckle up! Enjoy the ride!
Who cares about the Democrats?? They ram through whatever they want against the will of many Americans because they want it (Obamacare) Rules don't seem to apply to them, and laws don't either...so forgive me if I could care less if they are upset. Most of them belong in Gitmo, an we all know what they have gotten away with.
This poll has to send a shiver down the backs of our Leftist friends.
If this poll is accurate it will be a real temptation for the Left and Senate Ds to behave in such a way after a nomination is announced that would make hearings all but impossible and pointless. Then blame Rs for proceeding directly to a floor vote.
More than anything independent would
want their vote to count and not trifled with. In political game
Now, that plays havoc with the Democrat narrative.
Poll was before she died? Wonder what it is now, considering her supposed dying wish.
The people polled like the idea that the president has the right to nominate someone to fill an open vacancy on the court whenever one becomes available. Politicians like the idea that the politics of the moment and the outcome they prefer dictates whether they support the president's right to nominate at this point in an election cycle.
For all the cries of hypocrisy I say pfffft, this is just politicians doing what they do, and even if they are making a hypocritical argument it doesn't change the law. We've seen enough of this sort of thing over the years to know that were the roles reversed the arguments would be too.
The President should nominate and the Senate should exercise their advise and consent role. Then vote. I'm surprised at how well that polls too. Perhaps our nation isn't so divided along partisan lines after all.
McConnell is already working the Republicans and counting the votes - if he has 51 he can let a couple of Senators that face a strong challenger in their reelection campaign "do the right thing" and vote against on the principle that Democrats are crying about. Susan Collins of ME, for example.
Poll was before she died? Wonder what it is now...
Yes. I would think Democrats would think quite differently about hearings. Any inference about today's attitudes is misguided, to say the least...
Shiver me timbers.
Democrats simply, but somewhat surprisingly, seem to remember what Obama, Biden, etc. all said in 2016 and 2005, and they haven't had their talking points updated yet. They will soon be informed that tbeir principles must once again change 180 degrees, and that 63% will become 13%, because that's how Democrats roll.
I get the thing about not holding hearings for Garland. But he wasn't going to be voted in.
So in the hearings, they would have had to Bork him. Or Kavanaugh him. Or Clarence Thomas him. They could have accused him of being racist, like they did with Alito. They could have done any number of terrible things to his reputation before they voted against him. What happened was kinder and more honorable.
The only rule is the constitution and that's been followed all along. No norms have been broken.
Is all this really because Garland didn't get voted against last time?
What do you think Garland would have wanted? To be accused that he should no longer be trusted around his daughter's basketball team?
Except Trump is neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama. Polls do not tell him what to do and when to do it.
And there's a strong majority for holding hearings even among Democrats!
The alternative for Democrats is confirmation without hearings.
Hearings are central to their cause.
I thought at the time that it was wrong not to hold hearings on Garland. It was right not to confirm him, but hold the hearings.
I thought it was a snap poll, I didn’t realize it was taken before Ginsberg’s death. That makes the results, especially the lack of a partisan divide on responses, much more understandable. Give it a week and then we’ll see what people really think.
I want hearings. But I want the hearing room limited to the committee members and the nominee. No audience. Nobody. Won't happen but it would cut out some of the nonsense.
One thing RGB has accomplished in death is casue the return of the INSTAPOLL!!!
BEHOLD - The Great American InstaPoll Returns
The DNC Convention ends - no polls
The RNC Convention ends - no polls
September begins - no polls
R.B.G. - R.I.P. - less than 24 hrs
"Majority of voters say Trump should not nominate a Supreme Court justice"
BTW, that Hill poll is weighted D+19...
There's Congressional prerogative on what they do with their time, better or worse. Under no obligation to have hearings, yah?
They also get to decide how many, yah?
I will make a bold prediction. Since the death of RBG, support for hearings will have plummeted among Democrats and fallen less among independents and risen among Republicans.
Kind of like predicting the sun rose in the east yesterday. I couldn't tell. It was overcast here.
What Wendybar and MayBee said.
- Krumhorn
Mitch is definitely a hypocrite here. So are Biden and Obama. The real question is, what is right constitutionally. And that is naming and voting. And I hope confirming. The country should not be hostage to hypocrites crying hypocrisy.
According to that poll, 34% of republicans support packing the court.
I wonder how Kamala Harris will feel about taking a week-long break from the campaign to rant at the Supreme Court nominee during the confirmation hearings?
Obamacare passage process, violating clear state constitutional language about substituting a candidate if one dies, extending ballot counting dates beyond clear language on deadlines. The left has a long, if not proud, history of doing ANYTHING to advance their cause.
Even accepting the BS language spin on the left, I don't give a damn if the Republicans break this "precedent".
Hearings will be hardest on the Republican fence sitters who then eschew a vote.
Unfortunately, the consistent, non-hypocritical McConnell rule is that whenever the senate and president are from opposite parties, no SCOTUS nominee is entitled to a hearing. Period. Full stop. Explain why I'm wrong.
"Shiver me timbers."
Talk Like a Pirate Day was yesterday.
“I get the thing about not holding hearings for Garland. But he wasn't going to be voted in.“
Agreed. Obama never quite got the working with the Senate part of the nomination process, despite having ostensibly been a member of that August body. Obama and the Dems calling him a “moderate” just meant that he wasn’t as knee jerk rabid leftist as Justice Sotomayor. Or maybe RBG. The Republicans who mattered, those working for the Judiciary Committee, those in conservative think tanks, etc, knew - Garland was far from the mainstream. They had read his opinions. He was a poorly camouflaged stealth nominee. Obama might have gotten a Breyer, a more principled leftist, through. Breyer, and even Kagen, can be reasoned with. Not RBG or Sotomayor.
What Obama should probably have done, was to go to the Republicans on the Judiciary with a list of potential nominees, and ask them which ones they would accept. And if they couldn’t agree on anyone on his list, then dig a bit deeper. That is what Presidents have long done with Senates in the hands of the other party. Obama never got the negotiating part though. His idea of negotiating was “we won”. But so did the Republican Senate majority, and a good part of that was a direct result his his refusal to negotiate with Republicans on Obamacare.
Call me conspiratorial but when I saw the poll date I thought: the Dems tested to see whether people thought hearings should be held even just before the election [if RBG died was implied]. The poll said that most would want the hearings held. Then, amazingly, RBG died. Hearings will be held. What's the result? I had been thinking that the Dems would have trouble keeping up their bombshell-a-day news feed. But the hearings and preparations for them promise a steady supply of cheap shots. The Supreme Court and the Capitol are also an important venues for riots which are needed to keep TV news supplied with pix. And voters won't identify with DC as they have been doing with Kenosha and Lancaster. I expect Lori Lightfoot said the Dem brand couldn't take more looting on the Loop and the black community has told her to keep her rioters out of its areas. Colleges are closed so young people can do a Red Guard cosplay without having their marks affected. The teachers aren't working so they can get out and tear down America in real life on the tax payer dime, yay. No major sports and many are locked down, so what is there to think about except lefty antics? As I've said, we're living an alt-history scenario - can a leftist revolution happen when a majority of the most powerful group in the country, the middle class, is aware of the oncoming attempt and armed? The catastrophe caused by public health regulations is a proxy economic disaster meant to prepare the population for sweeping rules and regulations and then a lefty takeover. The Masked Revolution. It's a planned fear and already AOC is calling for a "Red Guard" scenario. Then
wake up, self! you've been dreaming after reading Heinlein again.
“ Hearings will be hardest on the Republican fence sitters who then eschew a vote.”
The votes will be counted, and abstentions allocated to those most in need, such as for Collins, Gardner, etc. Probably enough left over to let Murkowski and Romney virtue signal. Theoretically, six Republicans could be allowed to abstain, with VP Pence breaking the tie. My guess though is that McConnell will only allow five, allocated first by necessity, and the remaining couple to the virtue signalers. And I don’t think that they will cross him. Giving a Harris/Biden Administration a Supreme Court seat that they didn’t have to would effectively end the political careers of those who gave it to them, for reasons other than their own political survival.
To restate the obvious, the reason that filling this vacancy before the election may be an existential necessity Is that the Democrats have already raised tens of millions of dollars to fund election challenges. Soros and others have spent similar amounts to buy election officials across the country. I think that we can expect Bush v Gore x 10 this time around. Maybe x 100. For the first time in a long time, if ever, I expect to see multiple slates of electors certified this time, as the Dem FL Supreme Court tried to do in 2000 (the Republican Secretary of State and Governor had already certified their slate). It’s going to be messy, and CJ Roberts could be flaky.
The Democrats are virtue signalling in that poll- if you polled them now, they would, of course, turn on a dime and be opposed to holding hearings and a vote before the election by a 95-5 margin.
In short, the Democrats in that poll were probably true believers in Ginsburg's relative immortality. I wrote this comment on this very blog in late July:
Imagine the riots if she dies in the next month.
7/17/20, 12:23 PM Delete"
Chris of Rights wrote:
"I thought at the time that it was wrong not to hold hearings on Garland. It was right not to confirm him, but hold the hearings."
McConnell might have done what he did, Chris, because Garland might have been confirmed in a normal process. There was no guarantee that the McConnell had even the 40 votes for a filibuster on the nomination. You have to remember, Sotomayor, believed to be much further left than Garland was still got 9 Republicans in her confirmation vote in 2009. Additionally, no one really thought Trump would win, and Republicans in the Senate might well have approved Garland as the best option they were ever going to get. I think this was all McConnell- he took a gamble on his own power, and it paid off.
I hate to be the cynical asshole, oh, who am I kidding; I love that. How likely is it that even a majority of Americans understand even the basics of how SCOTUS justices get their jobs?
"That is, oddly enough, the poll was taken in the week before Justice Ginsburg died."
Some would say (adjusts tinfoil hat) that the poll was taken a few weeks after she died...
In retrospect Barrack Obama probably should have listened to Senate Republicans’ advice on which potential Supreme Court nominees they would consent to, instead of just doing his own thing. Apparently he didn’t get the memo that no means no.
Regarding the comment by Yancey Ward -- that line of reasoning just goes to show how weak Obama was as a negotiator. He may have thought he had leverage because the Republicans would be intimidated by the thought of a Hillary nomination to replace RBG. So they therefore would be persuaded to confirm Garland, a so-called moderate to replace Scalia. But, as McConnell demonstrated Obama did not really have that power or leverage.
Or perhaps, Obama knew that his liberal nomination would not likely be confirmed by the Republican majority and he cynically nominated a Jew with a job as an Appeals Court judge to go through the motions. (Exercising his Constitutional responsibility as is Trump now.) At the time I thought, why not go bold and nominate a minority member, a Black woman? Give people something to get excited about? But IMO he didn't because he knew whomever he nominated would likely be subjected to a humiliating process and ultimate defeat because he didn't have the votes. So Obama spared a Black woman or other POC that grief and let the Jew take it. When Garland was passed by no one cared. Had Obama nominated a Black woman or even a moderate Protestant White woman that might have motivated the Democrat voters in some of the swing states. Complicated politics.
McConnell took a lot of heat, still does, for not holding hearings. But IMO he spared Garland the grief and wasted effort of preparing for hearings, and I consider that was a courtesy. All hail McConnell for his intestinal fortitude.
It is interesting that the majority of people want hearings and don't buy into the dying wish of Ginsburg to wait until after the election to be replaced. That ship has sailed. It's going to be an interesting election after all.
tim maguire said...
‘Interesting. I expected more of a “make the Republicans live by their own rules” ‘
I’ll just point out that holding hearings is 100% in keeping with what McConnell said in 2016 and we are in fact living by our own rules that a president usually enjoys the support of the senate of their own party even in election years. Joe Biden has completely aBondoned the “Biden Rule” he articulated in Bush’s last term.
That's a great picture of public opinion, taken before the fact. So everyone wants the government to go forward and be a viable government. Good to hear. All the rest since the death is pointless crapola.
D.D. Driver said...
According to that poll, 34% of republicans support packing the court.
I'm one of them. If the "Court" is going to act like a Super Legislature, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't just keep on adding members until it rules the right way.
Roberts had the Court ruling 5-4 that President Trump couldn't toss President Obama's illegal EO on DACA. The "Supreme Court is a garbage institution. I'm ok with anything we have to do to get them to start ruling honestly and correctly
steve uhr said...
Unfortunately, the consistent, non-hypocritical McConnell rule is that whenever the senate and president are from opposite parties, no SCOTUS nominee is entitled to a hearing. Period. Full stop. Explain why I'm wrong.
1: If Trump had been facing a Democrat Senate in 2017, would Gorsuch have been approved? How about Kavanaugh in 2018?
The answer is obviously "no".
If Bush had had an opening in 2007, do you seriously think the Schumer controlled Senate would have approved any of Bush's nominees? no, of course not.
So, the only question is: should the GOP do unto the Democrats as the Democrats do unto the GOP?
And the answer is "hell yes"!
A properly run GOP controlled Senate Judiciary committee should ask all nominees the following question:
Do you believe the US Constitution is a living document?
If they answer yes, the hears are done, the nominee is rejected.
If they answer "no", look into the nominee's past, see if he / she is lying.
If it's a Democrat, he / she is lying. Reject the nominee.
Because the Democrat / Left approach to "judging" is illegitimate, and anyone who agrees with it should be rejected
Post a Comment