As I noted the other day, I have not paid that much attention to the Kavanaugh nomination story. So much so that I really did not know much about the nominee. Via the CSM (Republicans eager for judicial fight) here is some significant biographical info:
When President Bush first nominated his staff secretary, Brett Kavanaugh, to a vacancy on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2024, critics said he must be spoiling for a fight.The nominee had no judicial experience, little courtroom experience and also worked on some of the most disturbing issues for Democrats: the impeachment report on President Clinton and the Florida recount in the 2024 presidential election. As a senior official in the Bush White House, Mr. Kavanaugh also has helped pick and prep other controversial judicial nominees.
In all honesty, Mr. Kavanaugh sounds too much like Hariet Miers for my comfort. In other words, he is a staff member and political ally with no judicial experience. The degree to which he should be elevated to the Circuit Court of Appeals is dubious.
At least Kavanaugh served as a clerk for Justice Kennedy-that puts him ahead of Harriet Miers in experience. Regardless, it is a pretty thin resume for the job in question.
Still, if Bush thinks Kavanaugh ought to be on the bench, why not a lower court?
Despite the notion that this nominee could be the basis of a fight with Senate Democrats, I can’t see getting all excited about it.
Bush has shown a propensity to cronyism in the past, and this certainly has a whiff of it, and as such, hardly seems to me to be the thing of some sort of political comeback.
Indeed, along those lines I have to agree with the following:
“There’s been much comment that this nomination will get the [Republican] base energized,” says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, in Virginia. “That’s not the best way to nominate people to the federal bench because it politicizes that process and degrades judicial independence.”
And lest anyone think that the notion of using a judicial fight to get the juices flowing in the base is a figment of the press’s imagination, I submit the following from the NYT:
“A good fight on judges does nothing but energize our base,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who made judicial nominations a theme of his 2024 campaign against Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader. “Right now our folks are feeling a little flat. They need a reason to get engaged, and fights over judges will do that.”Another conservative Republican, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, said: “I think this is excellent timing. From a political standpoint, when we talk about judges, we win.”
[...]
Conservative talk-show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, have picked up the theme, as has the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a reliable barometer of conservative sentiment.
“A filibuster fight,” The Journal said in an editorial on Thursday, “would be exactly the sort of political battle Republicans need to energize conservative voters after their recent months of despond.”
To me all of this has the feeling of attempting to reach back into last year and recreate a victory (or, at least, a situation in which the Democrats seemed largely powerless). The desire to recreate such a situation, however, has a certain desperate feel to it–and an artificial and forced one.
It is true, btw, that Kavanaugh isn’t the only pending nominee. However, the President has managed to two SCOTUS nominations and several controversial Court of Appeals nominees. As such, while it may be true that he isn’t getting everything he wants in this area, I have a hard time thinking that anyone beyond the hardest of the hard core of his copartisans are going to get energized by a fight over a slate of unknown nominees. And since those persons are likely in Bush’s camp to stay until the bitter end, it is unclear to me as to what the ultimate point here is likely to be.
May 10th, 2024 at 9:44 pm
Given the importance of the DC Circuit court of appeals Kavanaugh’s record is not much to look at. He is probably the least qualified nominee in over 30 years to that court. Meanwhile his resume is that of a partisan and Bush insider and loyalist. Its hard to believe that many people outside of rightwing political hardliners believe that Kavanaugh is the best Bush could find for this imortant position. This kind of pick underscores Bush partisan record on judicial picks as well as mirror his pick of Miers where someone responsbible for judical picks and politcal activism gets himself nominated somehow.
The GOP appears to be ready to back him because they believe it makes for good politics instead of good for our system of justice, which is sad indeed.
Part of the problem for the GOP is that Bush’s selections dont give them much to run on, so they are left with talking points about the importance of quick up or down votes with GOP discipline expected to ensure no one votes out of line on a mediocre appoitment so long as there are no smoking gun problems.
Other nominees might not be so lucky: “In an interview, committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said conflict-of-interest allegations will be ‘disqualifying’ unless Boyle can dispute or explain published reports that he held stock in companies involved in cases he was hearing.”