McCain and Graham Squish Their Way To Voting For Another Obama Judicial Nominee

I've been pretty distracted this week by the ever-changing Osama bin Laden story, so this is a few days old, but it's still important, I think, to emphasize what a gutless worm Senator McCain can be. Here he is early in the week on Obama district court judge nominee Jack McConnell, a rabid and partisan trial lawyer:

I am deeply troubled by Mr. McConnell’s less than candid responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, his liberal judicial philosophy, including his public antipathy toward private enterprise, and his strong political activism. For these reasons, I will not support his nomination.

And yet, wonder of wonders, McCain ended up voting for cloture, enabling McConnell's inevitable confirmation.

While I would not have chosen Mr. McConnell as a nominee to the Federal bench if I was in a position to nominate, I respect the President’s ability to do so and therefore will vote for the cloture motion on Mr. McConnell’s nomination, but will strongly oppose his nomination to the Federal bench.

Absolute nonsense. A vote for cloture is a vote for the nominee. Even my four year old niece can count to 51, and with cloture secured McConnell was certain to get at least 51 votes (hint: there are 53 Democrats in the current Congress, including "independents" that caucus with the Dems).

To be sure, McCain wasn't the only squish to vote for cloture. Leading the charge on McConnell's behalf were McCain's good buddies Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander. The other GOP Senators to ultimately vote for cloture include the Maine sisters, Scott Brown, Mark Kirk, Lena Madcowski, and, uh, John Thune (?).

Look, I get it with the Maine sisters, Scott Brown, and Mark Kirk. The idea is to make blue states purple, purple states red, and red states redder. So I get that they can't act as if they're from solid red states like Texas. But Graham, McCain, Markanskie? What the hell is wrong with South Carolina? What's Arizona's excuse?

The problem with McCain and Graham, in particular, is that rather than making their red states redder, they seem to be dragging politics back in the other direction, desiring a principle-less purple compromise. "I don’t want to create a Mideast environment over District Court nominees," whined Graham.

Squish, squish, squish.

Update: Legal Insurrection has more, including an excellent floor speech from Sen. McConnell on why the GOP shouldn't be squishes when it comes to the filibuster and the consequences of this gang of senators' abdication of the "advice" portion of the constitutional mandate to "advice and consent."

posted by Gabriel Malor at 07:30 AM

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