In the Republican attack on every last institution, norm, fact and principle that puts up the slightest bit of resistance to Donald Trump, incompetent lying manchild, or in fact puts up even the slightest bit of resistance to the petty whims of anyone else in the party, you can now add the American Bar Association to the list of party enemies. Their crime: Reviewing Trump judicial candidates and publicly noting that several of them are grossly unqualified for judgeships.
The Republican Party could have taken this news in two ways. They could have thumbed through the ABA decisions and the candidate's records, both of which paint a definitive picture of not-at-all-qualified-for-a-top-judicial-job, and gently suggested to Donald Garbage Fire Trump that he try again, naming any of the hundreds of other candidates who would not be abject embarrassments. Or they could attack the institution as crazy libral enemiez of Dear Leader Garbage Fire, and whenever the Republican Party has a decision to make, in 2017, you'll never go wrong assuming they'll be going with the unhinged and fascist-sounding thing.
As the Senate prepares this week to confirm one appellate nominee that the ABA said was not qualified for the bench, Republicans are instead ratcheting up their attacks to try to discredit the century-old group.
"The ABA's record on judicial nominations has been highly questionable," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It has demonstrated over past decades repeatedly partisan interests and ideological interests."
How dare America's institutions suggest the nation be led by qualified and competent people could be the Republican Party motto, at this point. There's little point in naming someone qualified for each job when the overall goal, from federal departments to the judiciary to the Alabama child molester, is to install toadies bent on destroying the things they are put in charge of.
It should be noted as well that there's a reason the ABA is suddenly warning of a spate of "unqualified" candidates nominated by an American president for key federal jobs. It's because the Obama administration waited for the ABA to vet potential nominees before offering those nominees the position, while Team Garbage Fire can't be bothered with such things. So rather than having presidential nominees vetted in private, it's now being hashed out in public, in confirmation hearings. That's leading to episodes like:
The 36-year-old Talley has come under fire for having never tried a case and not disclosing that he is married to the chief of staff to White House counsel Don McGahn.
Yeah. That does seem the sort of thing that might get someone to look twice at your nomination.
Fortunately for the candidates rated as unqualified, however, the current Republican Party has never considered competence or temperament or an adherence to facts or any of the rest of that to be meaningful "qualifications" for high office. For decades they have been attempting to remake the nation's courtrooms into partisan tools for party activism. The hearings that have been held so far demonstrate that so long as each nominee will use the federal bench to advance Republican interests, there's not a hack or charlatan in the country they won't let slide through.