re: SC nomination and confirmation.
I may have written this before on this thread, but since it hasn't been mentioned, it was probably forgotten. Back in the 70s, the Republicans were tired of not having a say in nominations, and the Democrats (finally) realized that they might not be in the majority forever, so they invented "Rule 4", passed in 1978 or 1979, governing Judiciary Committee nominations. Basically, it said that in order for nominations to get out of committee and onto the floor, they had to have not only a majority vote in committee, but at least one member of the mimority party had to vote in favor of closing the debate and moving to a vote. This meant that if a nominee was so anathema to a party, they had a veto. This worked fairly well to moderate nominations (with two obvious exceptions) until 2003, when Orrin Hatch, with the blessings of his party, chaired the Judiciary committee, and unilaterally reinterpreted the rule to mean that the Chair could close the debate with only a majority vote and no minority asset. This increased the rancor, and led to the increased bitterness in the Bush years. |
