Miguel Estrada Supports John McCain, Too:
Again from Jennifer Rubin (Commentary): "Conservative lawyer, former Assistant to the Solicitor General and filibustered federal appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada says 'McCain' as well." For those who don't know, Miguel is both brilliant and solidly conservative.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Miguel Estrada Supports John McCain, Too:
- Ted Olson Endorses John McCain:
As for Estrada and Ted Olsen, I'd like to think that they are fine, principled conservatives who would never sell their endorsement for a judgeship, a cabinet position, or for anything else. But that's the catch, if they're fine, principled conservatives, what in the heck are they doing endorsing McCain?
I don't understand why this is relevant to whether McCain is "conservative" or not.
It hardly seems reasonable to assign political significance to one's views on a scientific question.
Did you think it stopped with evolution?
He may not have much of an IQ, but he sure has a "media"Q.
"Anthropomorphic" global warming is the theory where Mother Earth is a hottie.
Anthropogenic global warming is where the earth is getting warmer and its our fault.
I think Monsieur Le Compte is confusing Miguel Estrada and Alberto Gonzales.
I don't think your MSM bias argument works. First, there is no MSM media here. Second, Estrada and Gonzales are actually two different people.
Don't assume that serious smart conservative legal minds (and though I find his views quite disagreeable, Estrada is a serious smart conservative legal mind) agree with the position that the nuclear option constituted a correct interpretation of the Constitution. It's entirely possible that Estrada, while believing Democratic objections to his confirmation to be bogus, thought that they nonetheless had the better of the constitutional argument. If so, he might have a very positive view of what McCain did, as he got several conservatives onto the bench without making a mockery of the Constitution.
This is just speculation, but it's plausible.
Which would mean that Olsen and Estrada would get significant appointments in the McCain administration, which would obviate the concern that McCain wouldn't appoint the right kind of people to legal positions in his administration.
what he said
.
I sure hope McCain doesn;t put him on the supreme court. If there's one thing that probably unites most conservative and liberal readers of this blog, it's the need for the Congress to be held to it's enumerated powers.
*its
It's been several years since I took ConLaw, but I'm pretty sure the cloture rule is not in the Constitution. The "nuclear option" would have started a major pissing contest over Senate rules, but I fail to see how it would have been a Consitutional crisis.
That's bordering on totally irrelevant. The Republicans might have called it that, but it's really nothing more than spin.
The only real procedural guideline in the constitution is that "Each house shall determine the rules of it's proceedings."
Although the 1789 Senate Adopted a form of a cloture vote in the rules, it was changed to allow unlimited debate in 1804.
The fillibuster remained unused until 1841, when a small minority of senators tried to block a whig bill. Henry Clay threatened to change the rules, but was voted down.
In 1917 the Cloture rule was re-adopted, but required 2/3'ds of those present, in 1949 it was changed to 3/5th.
There's ample evidence the founders intended the senate in particular to be a more deliberative body, and although the composition of the senate has changed significantly, that still holds.
Although it might be constitutional to change the rules, the fact is the senate has for nearly all of it's history either had no way of closing debate or a requirement that a supermajority vote to close debate. Changing this would have been a break with long standing tradition over little more than a partisan pissing match.
I think it's also relevant that republicans have shown little restraint using the cloture vote to further their own ends. (and I have no problem with that, it is the rules after all, but it does make the earlier crying about democrats unfairly using it seem a bit hypocritical)
It's also notable that the house had no method of forcing a closure of debate until 1842, when rules were adopted limiting the time on debate.
In retrospect, a compromise was obviously in the interest of the Senate Republicans. If a simple majority of the Democratic-controlled Senate could ratify a nominee, and (as all but the most delusional among us should agree) a Democratic President is reasonably likely, then McCain did those of us who favor a limited judiciary a huge favor.
The alternative explanation is that they called it the "Constitutional Option" to paper over the fact that there was nothing in the Constitution that supported it.
What's really bizarre is that the Gang of 14 compromise got just about all the GOP nominees confirmed anyway, and yet conservatives still weren't happy. It's like they wanted to stick it to Democrats by abolishing the filibuster even if there was no need to do so, purely out of a sense of arrogance over the fact that they had the power to do so.
Moreover, anybody who believes in small government -- as conservatives allegedly do -- should support the existence of the filibuster, since it keeps Congress from getting things done. (Oh, I know some people were pretending that there was a difference between the filibuster for laws and those for nominations, but that was obvious disingenuousness. No principle would have protected it in one case but not the other. Today Republicans abolish the filibuster for nominees; tomorrow, Democrats do so for laws, using the same procedural trick.)