(cross posted from Confirm Them) It occurs to me that the other candidates are missing a real opportunity by not challenging John McCain’s repeated attempts to claim the mantle of being the hero of the conservative judicial wars. He keeps claiming pride in having helped secure confirmation of Roberts and Alito. Another candidate should say his claim is nonsense, and challenge the whole Gang of Fourteen deal. I know a few people here disagree, but the vast majority of conservatives to whom I talk think the Gang of Fourteen was a disaster. It is a simple fact that if the Constitutional Option had been implemented, Roberts and Alito would have been confirmed anyway…and so would a whole host of other judges. Regardless of one’s view of the tactical situation, it would be an easy thing for a GOP presidential opponent to ask McCain why, if the Gang of 14 was such a good deal, the numbers of confirmed appellate judges in 2005 and 2006 — in a GOP Senate for a GOP president — were so substantially below the numbers of nominees the GOP Senate confirmed in the 5th and 6th years of Bill Clinton’s Democratic presidency.
Meanwhile, McCain is just full of bull when he tries to claim that his main motivation for joining (actually, LEADING) the Gang of 14 was to get conservatives confirmed. When he first began working on the Gang deal, his stated motivation — this is PUBLIC, mind you — was less to help get nominees confirmed than it was to preserve the right to filibuster nominees. It was to protect a supposed institutional prerogative within the Senate, not to help get beyond the utterly untraditional, clearly anti-spirit-of-the Constitution, use of the filibuster to permanently kill judicial nominations. Moreover, before McCain went public with the idea of a Gang deal, the Constitutional Option appeared to have a real chance of passing — which would have meant the confirmation of almost all nominees.
And the fact remains that the confirmation of appellate nominees came to a virtual standstill after the Gang’s deal. Yes, we got the three controversial nominees confirmed (while several others were killed for good), and then we got Kavanaugh and two or three others. But that was it. A good candidate would turn the issue around and hang those numbers around McCain’s neck.
