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Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is uniquely capable of revising history and norms and traditions to fit whatever partisan agenda he has. An unprecedented Senate blockade of a completely qualified and non-controversial Supreme Court nominee? Sure, we can do that, because this is the last year of the president's term in office. That's completely normal, said Grassley of the Merrick Garland blockade. He's got a new one now, this time how it's customary to let home-state senators weigh in on some federal judges, but not others. In other words, he's going to let Donald Trump have his key judges, and pretend like he's still recognizing Judiciary tradition.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says that he is likely to give more weight to objections from Democrats on district judge nominees than more powerful circuit court picks.
“I think the blue slip is more respected for district court judges historically than it has been for circuit,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley said Thursday in an interview with Roll Call and the Associated Press for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program.
The Judiciary Committee’s process has generally required senators to return a blue slip of paper consenting to hearings and markups of nominees for federal judgeships from their home states, but the Republican from Iowa argues that’s not a hard-and-fast rule.
“It’s much more a White House decision on circuit judges than the district court judges,” Grassley said. “I mean this is going to be an individual case-by-case decision, but it leads me to say that there’s going to have to be a less strict use or obligation to the blue slip policy for circuit, because that’s the way it’s been.”
When Grassley says "because that's the way it's been," he's selectively recognizing how it's been. It's true that when his Republican colleague Orrin Hatch was Judiciary chair, he manipulated the tradition into pretzels. In 1998, he decided that to better obstruct Bill Clinton's nominees, he'd only need a blue slip from one home-state senator. Then in 2001, when George W. Bush was president, he scrapped the blue slip to prevent Democrats from objecting. In 2003, he decided that even with actual objections from Democratic senators, a nominee would go to the floor, and later that year decided that the committee could advance nominees with no Democratic votes at all, ending the tradition of having at least one minority vote to proceed.
It was bad enough that Hatch would show such a lack of principle when it came to Bush's nominees, given how fast and loose BushCo tended to be with things like the truth. But that administration doesn't hold a candle to Trump and the likely extent of his corruption. And Grassley appears to be ready to hand the federal judiciary over to him.
Democrats really have only one choice in this: don't be complicit. They have to do everything within their power to stop the Senate from proceeding. If it takes boycotting committee meetings, do it. Whatever it takes to force every Republican in the Senate to own this president and all his actions. Then use it to get the Senate back in 2018 or 2020.