For example, here he is defending the independence of the law-enforcement arms of the Executive from the politics of the elected President. As I understand it, that is exactly the position of Democrats vis a vis Donald Trump and the FBI or DOJ. The nominee was on their side way back in the Bush administration.
And here is the nominee asserting that he is on the side of a "race neutral" airport security policy in the wake of 9/11, when profiling (more on religion than race) was being put forward by many as an obvious security procedure. Again, for Democrats, this should put him on the side of the angels.
Booker says he's prepared to be expelled from the Senate in order to get these documents in front of the American people. Well, OK, thanks I guess. What does he see in these documents that is so alarming?
UPDATE: Booker was just grandstanding, it looks like -- the documents were cleared for release last night, at the request of his staff.
11 comments:
How long before he's on the street? 2 days? 2 weeks? 2 years?
My bet is "never," but YMMV. Pubbies have no guts at all.
I think he might ask his fellow Dems to go along with expelling him. Getting expelled opposing a Trump SCOTUS nominee makes him a frontrunner for the Dem nomination in 2020, and frees up his time to focus on running.
Just a swag but I'm thinking what triggered Booker about the first missive was 'unitary executive' and especially Kavanaungh's aside that he does not think the independence of the SG (Solicitor General?) is the way things should work but it's how the relationship between the office and the White House functions in the real world.
The Democrats are taking the extreme Deep State view that the President is essentially forbidden from exercising any influence at all in the actual operation of government beyond the appointment of people to fill the slots. Getting those people to actually do what the President desires, i.e. function as a unitary whole, is not part of the package. They'ed like nothing better than to see them actively thwart his policies (see Anon in the NYT). Of course as soon as a Democrat is in he WH this will all be inoperative (and probably not even a real issue given what we know about the Deep State).
As to the second, well, race-neutral is the new racist.
Couple things about this. One is that the docs Booker had his theatrical histrionics about releasing despite being "Senate Confidential" had already been released, and Booker had been told that by the archivist before he put on his performance.
The other is that, with all the Progressive-Democrat Senators on the Judicial Committee who expressed their enthusiastic support for Booker and his threatened action, the larger performance is the Progressive-Democratic Party's clear statement that rules don't apply to them; rules are only for the small people.
On the matter of a unitary Executive, what those Progressive-Democrat fear-mongers are carefully ignoring is that it's Congress that has so broadly expanded the power of a unitary Executive, while eliding the fact that our Constitution's Article II created the unitary Executive in the first place. It is, after all, Congress that has created all of the Agencies and Cabinet Departments that are in the Executive Branch. It is Congress that has delegated all the power to those facilities by ceding to them rule-making authority and then allowed that authority (with complicity from an activist Supreme Court) to expand into outright lawmaking. All the Executive can do is hire and fire the facilities' management teams--the only check he has on an overreaching Congress and its abuse of power.
Eric Hines
Booker made a fool of himself today. Not that he hadn't done that already numerous times before.
'Booker made a fool of himself"
yeah, but it does not matter. "any publicity is good publicity".
All he is doing is making sure his name gets remembered- when there is a sea of chaff, people need to do something to stand out , good, bad, stupid, it does not matter , because in the end, the people he wants to vote for him will remember one thing only- his name.
This has nothing to do with the SC nominee, and everything to do with Booker.
yeah, but it does not matter. "any publicity is good publicity".
Or not. I recall Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, to suggest a few.
Eric Hines
"or not".
I rest my case. Nearly every American knows who these people ARE.
There are 500 odd reps , Senators and gov's that I would have to look up just to find out who they are.
Yep. Nearly every American knows who they are, and as a result, their political careers are ended.
Eric Hines
The point is that the career does not even start if they are not "noticed". Politicians are dependent on grandstanding to get noticed. That is why they do it. Whether or not they succeed in their career is irrelevant to the question.
They are just making noise "look at me, look at me". Cherry picking the failures in no way invalidates my point. They have to be noticed on a wide scale- and remember, every squawk they make that we think is abhorrent, about half the country thinks is great.
It isn't useful to cherry pick anywhere. Your claim was the blanket "any publicity is good publicity". "Any" publicity may be useful to start a politician's career, but often publicity terminates it. Plainly, not "any" publicity is good publicity.
In the particular case of Booker, his career had already begun some time ago as a New Jersey mayor and accelerated with his artificial histrionics as he ran for Senate. Whether his current publicity terminates him remains to be seen, but it is in no way relevant to starting his career.
Eric Hines
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