Washington Post says delaying Trump's nominees would be 'an unprecedented break' with tradition

Rss@dailykos.com (hunter) · Sunday, January 01, 2017, 10:48 pm

In the annals of both-sides-isms, this is a doozy: Washington Post reporter Ed O'Keefe reports from nearby a Republican fainting couch on the threat that Democrats—let us pause to brace ourselves against the alarming charge—may go against traditional happy puppy comity when it comes to some of Donald Trump's (cough) more unusual presidential nominees.

Democratic senators plan to aggressively target eight of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees in the coming weeks and are pushing to stretch their confirmation votes into March — an unprecedented break with Senate tradition.

I know that this is bringing up things from the before-times of, say, five minutes ago, but for the span of nearly one full year the Republican Senate refused to allow a sitting president to nominate any nominee, period, to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Not because the nominee was a bad nominee. Not because the nominee was controversial, or because more information needed to be gathered. The refusal was because Republican senators simply did not agree that the sitting president had the right or constitutional duty to fill the seat at all, with anyone, because those Republican senators did not want him to. So there were no hearings. There were no questions. There was, according to Senate Republicans, no legitimate right of their president to nominate a new justice at all—because they said so.

So unless Senate Democrats are announcing that Donald Trump isn't allowed to have a Cabinet at all, delaying some of the more controversial nominees by ten weeks or so ain't an "unprecedented break with Senate tradition." If we're hitting March of 2018 and Senate Democrats are still blocking some of Donald Trump's nominees, call me the hell back up and I'll have the official journalism fainting couch reupholstered at my personal goddamn expense so everyone can have a good, solid professional pundit vapor-storm over the lack of comity. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

All right, though, let's see what's really going on here in this unprecedented break with the valued traditions of the Senate that everybody gives so very many shits about again as of—hang on, let me check my watch—this freaking afternoon. What, pray tell, is the drama that will be requiring us to put on our new can't everybody get along pundit faces while we all make mewing noises about this terrible new development that will Make The Senate A Sadder Place?

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