Sanctimonious Orrin Hatch wants you to know he is above petty politics.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is giving us a
preview of what's to come for the next two years of a non-functioning Senate.
Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) delayed Senate Judiciary Committee action by a week on nine judicial nominees for no evident reason. That group includes three Texas nominees with strong support from Texas Sens. John Cornyn (R) and Ted Cruz (R). Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is refusing to submit his so-called "blue slip" to advance a Utah judicial nominee he's previously praised as "well known and highly regarded." And Republicans are forcing four Georgia judicial nominees with strong support from Georgia's GOP senators to each wait an extra day before they can get confirmed.
Texas is in what's called a judicial emergency because of the number of vacancies in that state's courts—nine of them—and the number of cases per sitting judge. Both Cruz and Cornyn signed off on Grassley's foot-dragging. They didn't respond to Huffington Post's request for comment as to why they are letting their nominees languish. But a spokesperson for Hatch did.
"Senator Hatch doesn't want a person like Parrish to get caught up in unnecessary, partisan politics," Freire said Monday evening. "We want to give an opportunity to the new Congress to vote on these nominees."
Right. Refusing to give the go ahead on a nominee he has praised to high heaven isn't unnecessary, partisan politics. Hatch is above all that. He just wants his nominee to be held up again in the Republican Senate. Because he can.
Meanwhile, there are dozens of nominees who have made it out of committee and are waiting for floor votes. A handful are getting votes in this lame duck session, but only after Republicans have used every procedural trick they've got to waste time before every vote, forcing cloture on all of them and forcing every available minute used up. And this isn't about any concern they have with these nominees. For example, on Tuesday night three Georgia nominees, Mark Cohen, Eleanor Ross and Leslie Abrams, finally received votes. Abrams was confirmed unanimously, 100 to 0, and Cohen and Ross on voice votes.
There's one more reform Reid could try to push through on these nominations—doing away with the "debate" time Republicans are insisting on using up unless they actually use it to debate the nominees. Short of that, there will be dozens of nominees that will not get their votes, and whose nominations will expire at the end of the year, and probably for good. Clearly, Grassley isn't going to be making these nominations much of a priority in the new Senate.