Deinonychus antirrhopus

Indeed. This is the kind of thing that completely turns me off to the Republicans. Throw in their willingness to regulate, spend and expand government and the only thing left is lower taxes. The current batch of Republicans are generally porkaholics.

I hear you! However, in the spirit of not agreeing with you completely, I'll disagree with your point about lower taxes. I'm more interested in efficient stewardship of the government, and if you achieve lower taxes simply by raising our borrowing so as to grow gov't at such an impressive clip, then the lower taxes are more of a chimera, so I think the Republicans lose on that front as well.

Now if only the Democrats would be a little less obsessive with raising taxes, maybe tax cutting spending a bit more seriously they might actually be able to win over some of the secular Republicans and libertarians and present a real problem for the Republicans. Of course the Democrats have their extremists too.

I think they could too however, with a resurgence of the far-Left wing of the Democratic Party trying to shift the pendulum even further left, it's hard to say that there's much hope of seeing this strategy materialize.

Your whole line of reasoning takes me back to the pre-election debates. If secular Republicans and libertarians don't hold Republicans accountable for their misdeeds and continue to vote for them then there is no incentive to change. It's just like if you never hold a young child accountable for their misdeeds, that child will grow up to be trouble.

Really, what is the difference between the two parties on the ground? Both are addicted to big government but they each appeal to different social groupings of people. The Republicans seem to have a better cadre of election strategists, too bad they can't divert some of that talent into actual governance.

I look at it this way - if I'm disgusted with both parties then all I can do is vote to hold the one in power accountable, even if it means electing the other disgusting party. The outcome in terms of governance is the same, though one party hopefully gets a message to get back to core principles. If they reform then they win back my vote. In the end I still suffer from bloated gov't.

We just HAD that scenario, a Democratic party president with a Congressional Republican majority, in a very heated partisan atmosphere.

In that case, Clinton saw a confirmation rate of about 95% (of the judges that received votes) from the GOP controlled Senate. While it's true that he also had about 60 judge nominations stalled by various means from any vote, a kind of closet filibuster, the total numbers of judges he had confirmed in his 8 year period, 6 of which were GOP-majority Congress years, compared roughly to what Reagan got in his 8 years, with a 6 year hold on the Senate majority by his own party.

As to cutting spending being an alternative to raising taxes, you could zero out all discretionary spending and not balance the budget, Steve. So what in the world are you talking about?

In that case, Clinton saw a confirmation rate of about 95% (of the judges that received votes) from the GOP controlled Senate.

True. However, the Republicans didn't have a previous presidency where their judicial nominees were virtually all stopped. Also, one, I think, could argue that the Republican party is now closer to the religious right than back when Gingrich was speaker.

As to cutting spending being an alternative to raising taxes, you could zero out all discretionary spending and not balance the budget, Steve. So what in the world are you talking about?

Who said anything about balancing the budget. I'm not a fan of deficits, but cutting spending and not adding to it with things like the Medicare drug plan certainly would help. Really Sofla, I wish you'd stop reading things into my posts.

But no comment Steve, on the hostility of Democrats to people of faith?

Robin,

I thought I covered that in another post...sort of.

Link

Nathan also has a good point in that many liberals just need to have a nice cup of "shut the fuck up" when it comes to religious views. I have tried very hard in my attacks on ID to keep from attacking religion as well. If a person wants to be a Young Earth Creationist that is fine by me, just don't try to get that view point brought into science classrooms.1 If you are liberal and thinking of writing or saying something nasty about Christians, don't. Just shut up. Bite your tongue, stick your fist in your mouth, leave the room, whatever. Don't go slagging on somebody elses religion simply because you don't like it. Now if you want to argue the evidence, fine, but be warned arguing in favor of evolution is hard as it is quite technical and for most people it will be over their head (I would suggest you look at Glenn Morton's writings).

Emphasis added.

Well, not to be difficult, but can we get a description of the upcoming event from a less biased source? Joyner is quoting from an NYT article -- the idea that they might be misrepresenting the FRC's intent, isn't, you know, out of the realm of possibility.

Here's what the FRC says

I'm not sure what you find objectionable about this, other than their assumption that "strict constructionist" = "person of faith". I think it's perfectly plausible that a strict constructionist could be an atheist.

You need a url with that Dave.

I found this article that suggests that there is some sort of flier that is promoting this event. The flier supposedly says something about the filibuster being used against "people of faith".

The judicial nominees "are being filibustered because of their deeply held religious and personal beliefs," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Here is the source of the quote and the flier I think. I must say I'm still not thrilled with it at all.

The GOP during Clinton's term had recently been the subject of THE principle case of partisan judicial obstructionism (in their opinion), so bad that the guy's name became a verb for the practice: 'to BORK' a nominee.

The history of the two tax increases in the Bush the smarter's term, and Clinton's, together with the attendant deal to commit to pay-go and hard caps on discretionary spending, would appear to be the only model of fiscal restraint we've seen work well, even spectacularly well, in anyone now alive lifetime.

Why do you discard a priori that approach, when it is so fresh a success in memory?

Sofla, it is soooo hilarious when you can't get the most basic of facts correct.

Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. His nomination stalled by the tactics of the Democrats. Spell it with me sofla .. D-e-m-o-c-r-a-t-s

My ribs hurt.

Uhh, I don't know how to do links in this window, so here's an url for C&P'ing.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010193.php

One of the powerlin e guys makes a good point -- it's an entirely fair characterization to say that the Democrats do oppose William Pryor precisely because he's a person of faith.

The D's reasoning: He's a Catholic, and has strong personal beliefs about abortion. Therefore, he can't be trusted to follow the law, because he's a person of faith.

It's bigotry, and there is nothing wrong with pointing it out.

"But arguing that Democrats are defying Jesus..." is a mischaracterization of Frist's position, IMHO.

Robin, really. Try using it. Then, go back and actually read sofla's comment.

"The GOP during Clinton's term had recently been the subject of THE principle case of partisan judicial obstructionism."

So while I'm sure sofla can repeat after you, you haven't yet disputed anything in the comment. Reading comprehension isn't chief among your skills, is it?

On reread, apostropher, sofla's comment still cannot be made to make any sense at all.

Apostropher,

Other than the fact that Bork was nominated by Reagan and not Clinton. That change in facts makes me wonder about the entire point of Sofla's latest post.

Dave,

Yeah "Democrats are defying Jesus" is a nice bit of political rhetoric, but the Republican's position of filibustering people of faith is also a nice bit of political rhetoric.

Are you purposefully missing the point? Sofla is responding to the next-to-last partagraph in your post. The point is that we have a very recent case of a Democratic president facing a GOP Congress, following ("had recently been the subject") what Republicans considered to have been the most egregious case of partisan judicial blocking, Robert Bork, and he, like Bush, nonetheless managed to get most of his judicial nominees passed. I'm sure you recall that Republicans were still talking about Bork as the prime case of this well into Clinton's term.

Nowhere does sofla say that Clinton nominated Bork.

Yeah recently is 5 or 6 years eh apostropher? Okay, so 5 to 6 years after 2008 if a Democrat candidate is in the White House his nominees might similar success rates as Clinton. Seems it doesn't do much to my second to last paragraph. Or as Slart noted, even on re-read it still makes no sense.

recently is 5 or 6 years

It certainly was to the GOP.

Keep shifting the goalposts there, Steve. The worst you can accuse sofla of is awkward phrasing. If the argument now turns on what the proper boundaries of "recently" are, I think we've wandered a bit away from the issue at hand.

Actually your link suggests that there were problems with some of Clinton's nominees and that perhaps some of it stemmed from the treatement of previous Republican nominees. Of course, I guess that makes Sofla right.

Democrats were outraged at Republicans for the way they treated nominees in the later years of the Clinton Administration.

It sure seems like there is a tit-for-tat game going, and it is stuck in alternating punishment modes. Democrats screw Republican nominees, and when the shoe is on the other foot it looks like the Republicans do it to the Democrats.

alternating punishment modes

Indeed. Judicial nominations over past twenty years have been quite confrontational. And nonetheless, presidents from each party have been able to get a large majority of their nominees onto the bench.

Okay, so...the issue as it stands is as follows.

1. Most president's get most of their nominees appointed.
2. Some however, are selected by the opposing party for political purposes.
3. The nominees in 2 above are then used in a political game.
4. This game of tit-for-tat has been going on for some time.
5. This game is likely to continue.

Although I'd like to see some supporting evidence of the percentage of judicial nominees that are appointed. In particular I'd like to see something...anything supporting Sofla's claim of 95%.

Similarly it would be nice to see some data indicating trends.

Such a tendentious (mis?)reading from Robin may be expected, but from Steve?

The GOP has often claimed the 'politics of destruction' were invented by the Democrats when they defeated Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to be an Supreme Court Associate Justice. It remains a raw wound for them, exacerbated by what they thought was the same treatment of Bush 41's nomination of Clarence Thomas.

So, yes, the GOP's resentment of the Bork nomination's defeat lingers, and was given a booster shot several years later by the Thomas nomination imbroglio, and indeed, by the defeat of the Bush nomination of John Tower for Sec. Def. on 'issues' that amounted to 'the politics of personal destruction' attacks on Tower's drunkenness and womanizing. (Leaving aside that conservatives like GOP direct mail fund raising pioneer Paul Weyrich were among Tower's earliest and most important opponents, offended by his alleged immoral conduct.)

Upon Clinton's first plurality win, then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole immediately declared his role would be to represent the 57% who had voted for somebody else. Implementing the policy implied by the statement, under Dole's leadership, the GOP used the filibuster threat well over 150 times to block Clinton's legislative initiatives, more in one session of Congress than had been used in the entire history of the Senate prior.

My mistake for assuming that Sofla was trying to say something. I should have realized that the sentence was instead so completely and absolutely incoherent that no substance could be obtained from it at all.

A sophomoric riposte, even for you, Robin. Are you an equally dishonest interlocutor in life, or do you save it solely for the blogs?

Well Sofla, if the data I've seen is true it looks like your 95% number is a wild exaggeration. Try 71% for Clinton and only 51% for Bush which is one of lowest confirmation rates. My guess is the trend will continue my comment will look quite prescient.

In fact, most presidents have a 90% or higher confirmation rate in their first term with the first Congress...except for Bush. My prediction is to look for similar tactics from the Republicans if the Dems win the White House in 2008.

Nothing you have written has changed my view on that Sofla. Nothing.

TangoMan's important point has gotten lost in the apostropher kefluffle -- namely, that if the smaller-government, lower-taxes, more-freedom wing of the voting public never holds the Republicans accountable, then you're going to get the same ghetto effect that environmentalists and blacks did by becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. These groups got the occasional bone thrown to them by the Democratic leadership, but also were certainly taken for granted.

In return for unswerving support, they got a few favors, and got absolutely locked out of the process after 1994, and have been on the defensive ever since.

Doesn't take a crystal ball to see what would be next for this present situation.

I'm finding it difficult to get reliable numbers on confirmation rates. Google produces numbers all over the map. Using all circuit and district court nominees in a president's first four years as the measure, this document from last July says:

GWB - 225 submitted, 198 confirmed, 88%
WJC - 246, 200, 81%
GHWB - 250, 192, 77%
RWR - 185, 163, 88%

BadLib: Well, if the Democrats ever become more appealing I'll gladly walk out of the GOP.

BadLiberal:

The funny thing is that nothing is more likely to really create a "Party of the Center" than a shift by both parties to their respective extremes. Thus, for those lamenting the absence of some kind of grand coalition in the middle, they might actually want to see the GOP stay to the Right.

What this really highlights, however, is why a weak Democratic Party is bad for everyone. So long as the Dems are moving steadily to the Left, the GOP can scoop up the middle (providing a few bones in the process) while pandering to its own Right wing. Since the extremes do have principles and tenets (whether one chooses to agree with them or not), they will usually be the ones to drive that train.

The irony here is that in this scenario the small-government Republicans are actually closer to the neglected middle---something the Left and most Dems would never agree w/. For all the claims that the Dems support a balanced budget, they do not support a smaller government---except in the area of defense. So, who would the small-government Republicans (really, economic libertarians, in this formulation) support: the party of big government, or the party of bigger government?

Actually Apostropher I'd like to see the source data. They have Bush with 198 confirmations, but their detailed table gives only 197. Also, it looks like there isn't much resistance to District court judges but growing resistance to circuit court judges. Mashing the two together can give a skewed view of the issue. The detailed table is more informative IMO.

Personally I'm going to go with the Congressional Research Service (pdf). It shows a downward trend with The current President Bush has having the smallest percentage of confirmations.

Ah, thanks for the document. That's much more helpful.