A Short, Obligatory Post On An Elena Kagan Filibuster

by John Hawkins | July 1, 2010 5:34 pm

Elena Kagan is a pretty typical liberal judge — by that, I mean that she cares nothing about the Constitution and she’ll vote whichever way she believes will most help the Left. In other words, she’ll be little different from Stevens, Sotomayor, and Breyer, as opposed to Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito who stick to the Constitution and Kennedy, who votes based on coin flips, dice rolls, and how things are looking in his horoscope today.

So, should Republicans in the Senate vote for her? If I were a Republican senator, I’d vote against her. However, the philosophy most Republicans have had in the past is that if a judge can spell her own name and hasn’t been caught murdering any children, she should be confirmed. As a general rule, the public seems to share that philosophy, although the American people do seem extremely lukewarm on Kagan.

That brings up the real question: Should the GOP filibuster Kagan? Granted, the GOP argued rather convincingly that it was unconstitutional to filibuster judges during the Bush administration, but the Democrats certainly didn’t view it that way.

Even setting that issue aside, there’s another important question: What’s the end game? Let’s say Kagan is filibustered. Then Obama will put up another liberal judge and…what? Does the GOP filibuster him, too? Then, what about the next one? If they could pull that off, they could probably force Obama to appoint a moderate. That would be a strategic win. Sounds like a plan, right? Well, only if you have at least 41 votes that are willing to hang tough. In all honesty, Mitch McConnell doesn’t have that with people like Snowe, Collins, and Graham in his ranks. Could McConnell have the numbers to make it an option after the elections in November? Yes, perhaps — but, he certainly can’t pull it off now.

That means unfortunately, even a successful filibuster wouldn’t accomplish anything other than changing the name of the far left-winger who ends up on the Supreme Court.

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