May 20, 2011 12:08 AM UTC

"Judicial Nominations Deserve a Vote!" Wait, Did I Say That?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Today Republicans in the U.S. Senate succeeded in filibustering Goodwin Liu’s, nomination to a federal appeals court, preventing an up or down vote for the first time since 2005. As Politico reports:

The final vote was 52-43, eight votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster. Only one Republican joined Democrats in supporting Liu and only one Democrat voted “no” to opening debate on the 39-year-old University of California, Berkeley professor’s nomination…

…The procedural maneuver also upsets a six-year detente on filibustering judicial nominations. During the George W. Bush administration, a bipartisan group called the Gang of 14 agreed that they would vote to open debate on every judicial nominee that came through the Senate except for in “extraordinary circumstances.”…

…Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the lone Republican to support Liu on Thursday.

“I stated during the Bush Administration that judicial nominations deserved an up or down vote, except in ‘extraordinary circumstances’ and my position has not changed simply because there is a different president making the nominations,” Murkowski said in a statement after the vote. [Pols emphasis]

Kudos to Murkowski, not for her vote, but for at least sticking by her previous statements. Because as ThinkProgress notes, Murkowski isn’t the only Republican Senator who had previously defended an up or down vote:

Here is a representative sample of how current GOP senators felt about such filibusters when a Republican was in the White House [in 2005]:

* Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.”

* Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution requires it.”

* Tom Coburn (R-OK): “If you look at the Constitution, it says the president is to nominate these people, and the Senate is to advise and consent.  That means you got to have a vote if they come out of committee.  And that happened for 200 years.”

* John Cornyn (R-TX): “We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations.

* Mike Crapo (R-ID): “Until this Congress, not one of the President’s nominees has been successfully filibustered in the Senate of the United States because of the understanding of the fact that the Constitution gives the President the right to a vote.”

* Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the Democrats were going to filibuster.”

* Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The Constitution of the United States is at stake.  Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges.  The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent.  But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules.  They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation.”

Yup. Apparently it was “unconstitutional” to filibuster a judicial nominee in 2005. But that was a different time, man. Things were crazier then. The Constitution…eh, it’s a living document.