4.2.17: Sunday Morning Kabuki Theater about the Supreme Court Nominee, and Other Tales of Political Infighting

For a change we can at least slight veer away from talking about the president this week and focus on other things, namely the Supreme Court and the president's (really special conservative interests') nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Today you had the leaders of both parties in the Senate, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and to listen to them speak is simply bad kabuki theater. They both know how this nomination is going to turn out. Democrats in the Senate aren't going to give Mr. Gorsuch the 60 vote consent that is the norm in the chamber and Republicans will certain invoke the nuclear option to confirm him, as The New York Times Robert Draper explained during the program.
So the two men have to say things that are most politically satisfying to their respective bases.

The battle for the Supreme Court is the pinnacle of cynical partisan politics as both men showed. Democrats are right to keep bringing up the fact that Republicans didn't allow for hearings on President Obama's nominee of Merrick Garland. Mr. McConnell lead the obstruction and even to this day will not give a straight answer as to why they didn't bring the nomination to a Senate vote; that it was 'in the middle' of a presidential campaign is simply bullsh*t. However, they got what they wanted and that was this pick, nothing changes that.

So here we are, and the vote on Mr. Gorsuch is this week. The Democrats would be smarter to vote no, but not filibuster. The reasoning here, as the panel discussed, is that there is the possibility of another nomination coming during this president's term, and that's when the Democrats will really need to exercise the force of that. There are some Democratic senators who are going to vote for Mr. Gorsuch, namely Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Heidi Heitcamp (D-ND), because politically they have to for their more conservative constituents as a state-wide representative. If you're a Democratic supporter, you may not like that, but that's politics. Don't make that big a deal out of it because those two votes wouldn't change the outcome and you still need both of them to win reelection. Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed but not with 60 votes and he shouldn't get 60 because he's to the right of Justice Clarence Thomas, which is just what the country doesn't need.

This brings us to another topic of discussion today, the infighting going on within the Republican party, which is no doubt a mess. You have the right, the hard right and the off-the-chain Freedom caucus, none of whom can get together. We always kind of knew this was the case, but a shoddy, rush health care bill exacerbated and put a bright spotlight on the differences. On top of that you have a deal-making president who can't make the deal. Why? Because for the Freedom Caucus (Tea Party), their ideology is more important than money so you can not expect the president whose ideology is money to understand their position.

Greta Van Susteren rhetorically asked that who knew the Republicans were the 'big tent' and the Democrats had more cohesion. Let's be clear, she is misusing the term 'big tent,' which refers to diverse ideologies coming together in compromise, not infighting amongst a group with the same ideology, some more extreme than the other.

Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report point out that all of this is donor driven, which brought vocal agreement from everyone at the table, like why didn't someone say the obvious sooner. That's not a slight as it is natural conversation to be given a specific and drill down on it but once you get to the why you arrive at the more root causes, and in this case - donors.

You take all this inter-party and intra-party fighting and it makes what fmr. FBI agent Clint Watts, who testified before Congress last week, said which was that our adversaries see it as well, particularly the Russians who are now actively using it against us. He explained that the Kremlin's goal is to sew discord here so that when we're imploding we have little influence of matters happening around the globe, diminishing the United States' geopolitical power and influence. When you look at it from that perspective it makes our hyper-partisanship seem ill-focused and sad.

If we really want to have less partisanship and more compromise in this country along with less big-money influence, you'd have to take some big steps. One way to start us back on the road of internal reconciliation would be to make every Congressional district in this country square, and eliminate gerrymandering. There would still be conservative and liberal pockets but there would a lot more politicians answering to a more diverse constituency, in turn forcing representatives to be more tempered in their votes, if they in fact want to be reelected.  Just a thought...


Panel: Amy Walter, Cook Political Report; Greta Van Susteren, NBC News; Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; Robert Draper, The New York Times