Hopefully the good Senator Vance knows enough by now to keep carefully checking six, scrupulously and ceaselessly. If he follows through on this gutsy but ultimately doomed maneuver, he’s damned sure gonna need to.
Vance Vows to Use Senate Rules to Stop Merrick Garland’s Partisan Lawfare, Demand Cloture Vote for Most DOJ Nominees
There is a reason the Left went all in to stop the election of Sen. JD Vance in Ohio. Like that other Republican son of the Buckeye State, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, this man knows how to fight. His plan is to vote against unanimous consent resolutions on virtually all DOJ nominees. A filibuster will follow, which will force a cloture vote.Vance plans to be the sand in the gears that slows Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to a snail’s pace in the Senate nominating process. He is vowing to be a one-man version of a factory labor slowdown. In this case, the factory is the U.S. Senate, and its product is left-leaning judges and prosecutors who will aid and abet Merrick Garland’s persecution of Christian pro-lifers and political enemies of the Democratic Party like Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump is merely the latest victim of a Department of Justice that cares more about politics than law enforcement. Merrick Garland’s department harasses Christians for pro-life advocacy but allows hardened criminals to walk our streets unpunished. This must stop, and I will do everything in my ability to ensure it does. Starting today, I will hold all Department of Justice nominations. If Merrick Garland wants to use these officials to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents, we will grind his department to a halt.”
Vance said he would make an exception for U.S. Marshals Service appointments. But he will vote no on all unanimous consent resolutions. These resolutions are the normal way the Senate moves groups of nominations forward. Now for every single nominee, there must be an individual floor vote in the Senate. It means every vote would require a quorum with members of the Senate present and voting. All procedural resolutions and speaking opportunities would have to be respected and gone through before a nomination could be put to a vote. In short, every nominee could face the type of Sente maneuvering usually reserved for Supreme Court nominees. S-L-O-W, deliberative, and ever so annoying.
Sen. Vance plans a well-thought-out and stubborn defense of religious and political freedom. Filibuster and cloture are the tools he has chosen to fight DOJ overreach. Democrats will not be happy. The next question is how Republican leadership will respond to this scorched earth counterattack. Will they support Sen. Vance or Attorney General Merrick Garland and his reckless policy decisions?
OHHH yeah, a real headscratcher, that one. Which way might the Swampy slimewads of the Vichy GOPe jump? We wonders, Precious, yes we wonders.
Update! Meanwhile, over on the House side.
One of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s primary goals, having regained leadership of the House, must be to reinstate the institutional integrity that was honored only in the breach over and over again by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Long-standing fundamental House rules and protocols repeatedly were violated under Pelosi, for the single purpose of pursuing a partisan political agenda at the expense of historically honored principles. The formation of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol and its indisputable perversion of important House rules highlight the issue. The rules that were violated allowed the committee to abuse the subpoena process and deny subpoenaed witnesses basic protections the rules were intended to provide. This must be corrected immediately.
There is one mechanism readily available to the speaker to restore order and respect for the rules. It is called the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (“BLAG”).
The BLAG was created in 1993 by a Democrat-controlled House, over the objection of a majority of Republicans in the House. It is a body comprised of five members of the House leadership, three majority party members and two minority party members, that speaks for the House in directing litigation in which the BLAG perceives the House to have a direct interest.
Republicans who opposed the formation of BLAG argued that the entire House should vote before a legal position that purports to speak for the House is adopted. The Democrats prevailed, and now by House rule, once BLAG members vote to direct the House general counsel to participate in litigation and take a position, even if the vote is 3-2, its position speaks for the entire House.
McCarthy characterized the degree to which the Jan. 6 Committee flagrantly violated long-entrenched House protocol and rules to support its partisan political agenda as “unprecedented” and “an egregious abuse of power.” However, when the rules violations have been challenged, courts have concluded that they were bound by the House’s own interpretation and application of its rules and had to yield to the BLAG as the official advocacy voice of the House. Since BLAG endorsed the Jan. 6 Committee’s actions by a 3-2 vote, their rules violations were permitted with impunity, notwithstanding the express language of the House rules.
McCarthy must now convene the BLAG, as he has the full authority to do, to reverse its partisan political perversion by Pelosi and company, and to return the House to a body that at least honors its own rules, without regard to a politically expedient agenda of the day.
Yeah, I shan’t be holding my breath awaiting it. Neither should you, nor anybody else, lest they turn blue and fall over deader’n a ProPol’s integrity. Whatever else McCarthy may or may not be, he’s already proven himself to be no JD Vance, not by a long yard he ain’t. As the very next two ‘graphs after the above excerpt confirm well enough, he already rolled over, wagged his tail, and showed Pelosi his yellow belly once. So forgive me for thinking that it’s gonna be a mighty long wait for any such thing. The addled-pated old soak rightly doesn’t expect any such show of defiance and rectitude from him, and neither should anybody else.
If you haven’t read his book, hillbilly elegy, I recommend it. Someone made a movie out of it, but the books are always better than the movies.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Vance doing this, but we will see how long he can resist those big donor bucks and if he doesn’t play ball, watch the GOP primary him in 2028.