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March 21, 2016 01:54 PM UTC

SCOTUS Stonewall Going South For GOP?

  • 20 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Mike Coffman (R), Sen. Morgan Carroll (D).
Rep. Mike Coffman (R), Sen. Morgan Carroll (D).

According to a new poll, The Hill reports, the decision by U.S. Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell to stonewall any Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama is shaping up to be a huge election-year mistake:

More than three-fourths of Americans say Senate Republicans are “playing politics” by refusing to take up President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, according to a Monmouth University Poll released Monday.

Overall, 77 percent of Americans say they think Republicans are “playing politics” by not allowing nominee Merrick Garland to get a hearing. That total includes 62 percent of surveyed Republicans…

“We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential election which is raging, is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who’s going to make this decision, not this lame-duck president on the way out the door, but the next president, next year,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Fox News Sunday.

From Monmouth University’s polling memo:

“The GOP leadership say they won’t hold hearings on Obama’s nomination in order to give the American people a voice in the process in November. The American people don’t buy that argument,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Just 16% of the public agrees that the Senate Republicans are refusing to consider Garland primarily to give the public a say in the nomination. Fully 77% think the GOP leadership is just playing politics. Those who see this stance as mainly a political ploy include large majorities of Democrats (86%), independents (80%), and Republicans (62%).

Obviously, these are not good numbers for anyone hoping to defend the GOP’s decision to stonewall Obama’s nominee–especially now that the nominee is a known commodity, and politically not someone against whom Republicans can reasonably keep up fever-pitch opposition.

Although the battle over confirming Supreme Court justices necessarily plays out in the Senate, the debate could have an impact on other downticket races this year. In Colorado’s CD-6 race Democratic candidate Morgan Carroll has made Republican intransigence an issue, taking up the “Do Your Job” call:

Washington Republicans have already pledged to block any Supreme Court nominee until after the election.

This kind of obstruction is unprecedented. And Morgan Carroll is demanding Congress act to consider Merrick Garland immediately.

To be fair, her GOP opponent Rep. Mike Coffman had already gone there:

After his own sweeping election victories, FDR badly overreached when he tried to shape the Supreme Court in a way that elevated his short term political priorities over the system he served. While the facts here are different, the specter of presidential overreach is just as real today…

Obviously, Rep. Coffman’s reference to FDR’s “court packing” scheme of 1937 is ridiculous, and simply noting “the facts here are different” (seriously?) doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. But the point is this: just like on immigration or abortion, Coffman has cast his lot on a high-visibility issue with the side a majority of his constituents in swing CD-6 do not agree with.

And no one can get away with that forever.

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20 thoughts on “SCOTUS Stonewall Going South For GOP?”

  2. What does FDR have to do with it, Coffman? He tried to pack the court by expanding the number. Obama isn't trying any tricks. He's simply doing what he has every right to do and what the people elected him to do until the end of the second term.

  3. Have you noticed the recent talk about the possibility of Dems taking over not just the Senate, but the House as well?  Charlie Cook's Political Report rates CD6 as a " Republican Toss-Up".  Let's see if that gets changed to "Leans Democrat" in the near future.

    Thank you, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.  May I have another?

    2. The math is downright hellish. The House is so gerrymandered and the D-trip so disorganized that I don't even think we have Dems running in half of the seats at the moment, let alone most of the seats we could legitimately challenge.

      Aside from the obvious (our own, fantastic Morgan Carroll), most of the gains should come from New York and California, which have 8 capturable seats between them. One seat each for Utah, New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa (with a minuscule chance at a third), Illinois (since they failed to get someone to run against the Puppy-Killer Mike Bost).

      Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania only really have four competitive seats between them. The open seats in Wisconsin and Minnesota really shouldn't flip unless the guy the GOP runs is utterly useless. 

      Virginia and Florida should net one new seat each from Court-mandated re-redistricting, and they both have one or two seats that could turn blue in the best of circumstances. Then there's Arizona, where we have to both capture one and defend one, so it could easily net us nothing. Only a single one of Texas's 36 seats is competitive, and we should take it easily.

      Nothing in Georgia, nothing in North Carolina. Many of those seats we had after 2008 (and many residents of which didn't turn out for 2010 and doomed us all) are now cracked between solidly Republican districts, and it just doesn't seem possible to take any of them away from Republicans.

      Best we could do is just barely a majority, 229 or so, and that’s if Trump REALLY fucks things up (by that I mean, Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic and killing the last polar bears, really fucks things up)

      2010 was the single most decisive election in American politics in the modern era, and we pay the price every election year after, every day after.  

      What we can do, and what we must do, is get Sen. Carroll and all her soon-to-be colleagues into the House as soon as possible, so they have the best resources available to defend in 2018, and in 2020, when they and every other Democrat, Independent, and sensible Republican, have the chance should capture every state redistricting process possible to set up the next decade as one that will actually elect representation proportionally, rather than the current Kock-bought, oligarchic system. 

      Its sad in Colorado where I can't name anyone even thinking of running against Tipton, the other potentially competitive seat in the state, but at the very least we can direct all our resources towards Morgan, and balance out the rest of the decade after sending too many Colorado Republicans to Washington. 

      Damn that was blocky. Sorry 😛

        1. Nice. Leroy is a rural huntin' shootin' fishin' Marine, with a squeaky clean rep and a beautiful family. If he gets a campaign started early enough, (not wait until too late like Buffie and Abel Tapia), then he could do well in CD3.

            1. Agreed.  Under our fucked up system of unlimited never-ending campaigning and campaign financing, incumbent Congressional Representatives effectively begin campaigning and fundraising two years prior to any given election.  Serious challengers, even those impeccably qualified, who want to take on incumbents really haven't seemed to have figured out that they must do nearly the same …

              (… at least until enough folks wake-up and begin to demand changing our system of institutionalized electoral bribery and graft.)

              1. Therein lies the trick…make the process so expensive only a select few will ever get to the point where they can compete, and the institutions with the money decide who gets to play. I guess Cory and Michael are apt examples.

                Bernies' campaign seems to be turning that on its ear a bit.

        1. I think the precident Moddy is actually thinking of is GW Bush and the several months of vacations he took.  And then after the 2008 crash, pretty much checked out for good.

          Wasn't there some Colorado Republican who either didn't run for re-election, or lost, and simply closed his office before his term was up and refused to answer any constituent calls?

          The GOP Senators owe the taxpayers their paychecks for sitting on their asses for all these years.

          Talk about welfare queens — you can't beat a Republican at that game…

  5. This question was so lousy as to make the poll useless.  It just asked whether Republicans were playing politics.  It didn't ask whether people thought this was a bad thing, it just assumed that people would say that.  I'd bet a fair number of Republicans and independents who think the Republicans are playing politics but also think playing politics with a Supreme Court nomination is just fine.  Other polls show this to be a much, much more closely divided question.

    The poll has a bias in favor of the creators' personal agenda and therefore doesn't tell us anything.,

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