Current Events > The "Merrick Garland for FBI director" scheme shows why liberals lose

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/12/the-merrick-garland-for-fbi-scheme-shows-why-liberals-lose/?utm_term=.8e1825aee85b

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I've seen anyone in Washington fall for. It's like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing “NOT A TRAP” on a whiteboard next to it. It's also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that's been written since the Republican National Convention — the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts.

On Thursday, as we reported at The Washington Post, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave real oomph to an idea that had been bouncing around conservative media. Democrats had vetted and praised Garland when President Barack Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court — how, then, could they object to the idea of putting him in charge of the FBI?

The reasons to object were quickly explained by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. “Garland probably won’t want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land,” Lithwick wrote, “and surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person.” Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-to-4 liberal majority to a 6-to-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: If Garland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn't need a President Trump/Russia special prosecutor.

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Lee, who does not stop in the hallways to talk to reporters, must have realized that the senators who did would push the idea along. Democrats, after all, came to feel that Garland was a good man robbed of a job — their first instinct, when asked about him, was obviously to sing his praises. Their second thought might be to point out that this was a cartoonishly obvious ploy to give a conservative judge a lifetime appointment on a powerful court. But most people, hearing the idea, might not get to the second thought. Amusingly, a number of liberal opinion-havers glommed onto the Garland idea, apparently unaware that he was still on the court in D.C. From a former secretary of the treasury:
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Six months later, Democrats are still obsessed with finding intra-Republican resistance to Trump. Some of that's just accepting reality — Republicans control Congress and most of the states, so they can stop Trump when Democrats can't. But some of it assumes an Aaron Sorkin-scripted conclusion to the Trump presidency. At some point, possibly, Trump's own party will stand up to him and bring him down. When Republicans say they want Garland for FBI, Democrats hear Trump's party in rebellion, because that's what they want to hear.

They are getting it exactly backward. Lee, like most Republicans, is willing to grit his teeth through most of what Trump does in exchange for priceless long-term conservative gains in the regulatory state and in the courts. Democrats understand this attitude when Republican voters display it. They know that many Republicans put up with Trump so that they could keep Garland off the Supreme Court and replace former justice Antonin Scalia with a conservative.

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Pretty sure that was intended as a joke, but of course WaPo fell for it. Remember when these guys broke Watergate? Wtf happened.

Like Garland would even want to leave his life tenured highly prestigious judgeship for some politicized agency position.
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Democrats get a liberal FBI director (and the person they wanted on the SC) and they STILL whine about it.
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I mean I've said they aren't the sharpest crayon in the box.
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Mal_Fet posted...

Democrats get a liberal FBI director (and the person they wanted on the SC) and they STILL whine about it.

dems are hopefully smart enough to realize that a liberal FBI director is useless if he's fired immediately (although garland is not a particularly activist liberal)

but

Gojak_v3 posted...

I mean I've said they aren't the sharpest crayon in the box.

on this we are agreed
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1. Guy says, "we got nothing on you, but we are trying as hard as we can to slander and falsely incriminate you."

2. President fires the person

This is good for Trump, any way you look at it.
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It would open up a spot on one of the upper courts for Trump to make yet another conservative appointment.

In the past 100 days Trump has shown he's willing to fire anyone and everyone that might get in his way.

And the Republican Congress consists of those unwilling to defy him and those gladly sniffing his ass in order to pass as much deregulation as they can. The courts are the only balance left.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

Democrats get a liberal FBI director (and the person they wanted on the SC) and they STILL whine about it.

lmao Mal didn't read the article again

I think he took the title to mean "this is why trump is president"
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I forgot who it was but this is more serious than the article is taking it for.

There was past president that successfully convinced a supreme justice to resign and be an ambassador and another who got one to resign by appointing his son to being a prosecutor and creating a conflict of interest.

http://the1a.org/shows/2017-05-10/fbi-director-james-comey-is-out-now-what
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