Keller @ Large: Supreme Court Battle Exposes Mess In Washington
BOSTON (CBS) - OK, I admit it – I'm baffled by this whole Supreme Court nominee dust-up.
Let's go back just over a month ago to the passing of Justice Scalia. This obviously alarmed conservatives, including GOP Senate leaders who immediately declared they wouldn't consider any nominee sent up by President Obama.
This is where my confusion begins. Why bother saying that when you know you have the majority of votes needed to reject a nominee?
Rejections are somewhat uncommon, but they do happen, most recently in 1987 when Democrats killed the nomination of conservative Judge Robert Bork.
The Republicans could have simply waited to see who the president wanted, mulled it over, (or pretended to) and then acted. Instead, they made themselves look intransigent and reactionary, surely knowing the Democrats would try to use that against them in the elections.
But wait, the justification is that the next justice should reflect the will of the voters as expressed in the fall election. But what if they choose Clinton, Sanders or even Trump?
Will their idea of who the new justice should be make the GOP base any happier than they are with the Mister Rogers lookalike President Obama chose?
And I have to laugh at the Democrats' complaint that the Republicans are playing politics with the court. What shall we call what the Democrats are doing? Did the president go out of his way to choose a moderate nominee because he didn't care about the politics of the moment?
Come on.
I can only offer one explanation for this whole mess – nobody down there has the slightest idea what they're doing.
But you knew that already, didn't you?
Listen to Jon's commentary:
