Timothy Birdnow

The Senate has reached a point of nearly complete stasis thaniksto mitch McConnell's worship of antiquated Senate rules and the unwillingness of the Republicans to move forward the Trump agenda lest an outsider show them up and break the power of the Establishment. But McConnell is starting to move,k probably out of fear, and he has taken a welcome step; he just ended the blue slip rule which has kept President Trump for getting any judges appointed.

The blue slip rule basically made it possible for one Senator to stop a judicial nomination. If a Senator from the home state of the nominee objected to said nominee he could issue a blue slip, thereby killing the nomination. The Democrats were furious when John Ashcroft did it to a black judge appointed by Bill Clinton Ronnie White, who once called a plaintiff in a case "m-f" in his brief). The Dems railed against the blue slip proceedure, and yet now they will defend it with all of their might.

Be that as it may, Mitch the Prison Bitch has finally asserted himself. According to Natalia Castro at Americans for Limited Government:

"With only seven judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate, despite Trump’s now 54 pending nominations, McConnell has placed part of the blame on this policy for allowing individual politicians to single handily stall the confirmation process.

McConnell stated the blue slip policy will act "as simply notification of how you’re going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball.” This is a smart decision considering the blue slip process represents the slow, outdated, and partisan policies of the swamp, but a closer look at the judicial nominations still pending proves the real issue is rooted much deeper in the Senate.

While this move will effectively allow the nine judicial nominees from states with Democrat senators to be freed up for consideration in committee, assuming they were all be blue slipped, it does nothing to expedite the process for the 10 judicial nominees who have cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee and are merely awaiting a confirmation vote on the floor. And there are another 35 judicial nominees from states with Republican senators."

End excerpt.

McConnell has to put up or shut up. He has proven an ineffective leader, whether by weakness or design. I would argue the latter; he doesn't want Trump to be successful and disprove the arguments made by the swamp rats of the GOP and the consultants who promote them. But either way McConnell has failed to move anything in a Senate he controls - and that is grounds to remove him from the leadership and perhaps even his Senate seat when he is up for re-election. It's time for Mitch to earn his pay or get out of the way.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:28 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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