"Too hot for prime time"
by digby
This morning's Kavanaugh hearings have been somewhat exciting with Democrats objecting all over the place. One of them brought up this article about the process this freak show of a White House has used to pack the courts despite the fundamental illegitimacy of this president. This passage was quoted:
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, as it is officially known, has played a crucial role in putting conservative jurists on the bench. As White House counsel, McGahn is responsible for helping Trump select his judicial nominees. And, as he explained in his speech that November afternoon, he had drawn up two lists of potential judicial appointments.
The first list consisted of “mainstream folks, not a big paper trail, the kind of folks that will get through the Senate and will make us feel good that we put some pragmatic folks on the bench.”
The second list was made up of “some folks that are kind of too hot a for prime time, the kind that would be really hot in the Senate, probably people who have written a lot, we really get a sense of their views — the kind of people that make some people nervous.”
The first list, McGahn said, Trump decided to “throw in the trash.” The second list Trump resolved “to put before the U.S. Senate” for a confirmation vote. The president, McGahn assured his audience, was “very committed to what we are committed to here, which is nominating and appointing judges that are committed originalists and textualists.”
Trump doesn't even know the Supreme Court is a separate branch of government. He demands personal loyalty from the justices he appoints. All they had to do was ay "too hot for prime time" for him to want to appoint the most hardcore wingnut hacks. It makes him feel macho and potent.
Now, in anticipation of possible loss of the Senate and the further implosion of the presidency and possibly the nation as we've known it, the Republicans are pushing through this extremist judge in order to get him in under the wire.
Trump may end up impeached or tossed out of office after one term. But his legacy will be secure with a far-right extremist court that will continue to reshape this country in Trump's image long after he is gone.
In case you were wondering:
While Trump has lagged behind other presidents in political appointments, the streamlining of the judicial-selection process has helped him deliver a historic number of judges to the federal bench. In 2017, the Senate confirmed 12 of Trump’s appeals court picks — the most for any president in his first year in office. This year, the Senate has already confirmed 12 appellate judges and, according to a Republican Judiciary Committee aide, hopes to confirm at least four more. The White House refers to every new batch of judicial appointees Trump selects as “waves” — in early June, it announced the “Fifteenth Wave of Judicial Nominees”— as if they’re soldiers landing on the beaches of Normandy.
They see it as a war. And they are right.
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