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Home » Debate open thread (with a note on the possibility of a recess appointment of Scalia’s successor)

Debate open thread (with a note on the possibility of a recess appointment of Scalia’s successor)

The New Neo Posted on by

The debate is tonight.

I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Scalia’s death has caused deep concern, and we were already pretty frayed (that’s not the royal “we;” I mean conservatives, and even Americans, as a whole).

To add to the mess, now there is some discussion of the possibility that Obama will try to make a recess appointment while the Senate is not in session. As this Washington Examiner article states:

The Senate is scheduled to be in recess until Feb. 22, giving Obama nine days to mull the idea. If Obama were to pursue that route, Republicans likely would argue that the Senate was out of session for too short a time for Obama to take advantage of the recess appointment power. But the Supreme Court has never said exactly how long a recess must be for the president to make recess appointments.

“It’s a live threat,” the aide said.

I did some research on this, and I have to say I haven’t a clue whether Obama would get away with the effort. There have been previous SCOTUS recess appointments before, but I don’t know that they involve a situation as precarious and contentious as this one. I was also trying to find out whether the Senate would be able to come back quickly from recess if that were to happen, and I can’t find a thing that addresses that issue. I would imagine we’ll hear more about all the possibilities pretty soon.

9:00 PM: The debate begins. The first question is about Scalia’s replacement. So far everyone agrees that the GOP must prevent a nomination by Obama.

9:25 PM: So far I have to say this debate is much better than most of them, although I’m busy so I’m listening with only one ear. The questions are closer to being actual substantive questions rather than attempts to pit one candidate against the other. All the replies so far sound intelligent. I believe that part of the reason the whole thing is better (so far, knock wood) is that it’s now down to six candidates.

As soon as I wrote that, Trump attacks Jeb Bush on foreign policy. People are booing, and Trump goes into the accusation that they are all lobbyists again.

9:30 PM: I think Cruz sounds good; intelligent, confident, knowledgeable, calm. But that’s just me; I pretty much always think that.

9:32 PM: Trump was just asked the sort of question I’ve been wanting someone to ask, about how he said George Bush should have been impeached. I don’t think he’s given a good answer; he’s saying Bush made a mistake, but that has nothing to do with being impeached, and he’s doubling down on the “he lied” accusation.

And Jeb Bush shows some energy in his defense of his family. Now Trump makes the accusation that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch. To me, that shows that he fights with liberal talking points. The audience boos vociferously, and if I were there I’d be joining them. And Rubio joins in to defend George Bush (and I don’t think it’s with a memorized talking point, either).

10:00 PM: It occurs to me that, at least in this particular debate, everyone except Trump sounds okay and most sound very good. That hasn’t always been the case. I prefer some of them greatly over some of the others, but the only one who has said some truly offensive and completely unacceptable things is Trump. And yet he’s the leader. As I just wrote in the comments, I would think anyone the least bit conservative would have been deeply offended by his doubling down tonight on the leftist meme “Bush lied!” and his blaming of 9/11 on Bush, too. That should make a lot of people desert him. But from previous experience, I doubt it will. I’ll be curious what some of the pro-Trump commenters on this blog will say.

10:08 PM: Cruz and Rubio go at it on their immigration policies, past and present, and each accuses the other of lying. We’ve passed this way before. I’m not so sure most people can tell who’s right and who’s wrong about that, and are sick of this battle. Jeb Bush comes in with the old “this is what senators do, elect a governor instead.”

10:33 PM: Tremendous fireworks between Trump and Cruz and some of the others, in which Trump again really sounds like an infantile child. I assume his supporters might differ with that perception. But I think that with fewer people on the stage, Trump gets more air time and it highlights the qualitative differences between Trump and all the others.

Comments

Debate open thread (with a note on the possibility of a recess appointment of Scalia’s successor) — 55 Comments

  1. Need two threads. RIP Scalia. The debate is a hoot, in a we are already living in “Idiocracy”. RIP USA.

  2. Can McConnell call the Senate back in session immediately on his own to forestall a recess appointment? If not, what must happen to bring it back in session?

    If he can, then he should set up a rotating schedule of all the Republicans to preside on any day the Senate would have been in recess over the next 11 months.

  6. Sorry, jumped right in to the debate thread w/out seeing your Scalia posts. My bad ( or whatever the kids are saying nowadays ).

  7. Baklava:

    I agree. But I already didn’t see how a conservative could vote for Trump. After all, in this debate, all he did was double down on what he’s already said and never repudiated. The only reason it didn’t happen earlier is that he wasn’t asked a question like that in a previous debate (as far as I can recall, anyway). I was very happy when I heard the question.

    His supporters will probably excuse or applaud it.

  8. Kasich 8 billion hole to 2 billion surplus.
    Answered well. Bush countered against Kasich. The unusual position of looking conservative. Kasich countered with positivity.

  9. Who can stop him from appointing? Some lower court would approve, the sc would deadlock 4-4 and appt would stand

  10. I’m not so sure this time Neo. You and i have heard Trump say these things previously but not in this obnoxious way. Trump behaved poorly.

  13. Hopefully, the people of SCarolina won’t like Trump dissing Lindsey Graham and George W. Lots of military folks there. trump sounded like he was in a dem debate.

  19. Cruz, “adults learn not to interrupt each other”
    Rubio, “because i think Nikki Haley has a better chance at tackling poverty than Obama”
    Carson, “Thinking about our children”

  23. Neo, can you make the submit button farther from the Preview button. Phone screen makes it harder to hit

  24. Kasich is trying to look like the grown-up in the room and it seems to be working. I’m still a Cruz fan though. Trump I think is hurting himself tonight.

  28. I probably haven’t thought of all the side-effects, but I’m kind of thinking it would be a good idea for Obama to give us a recess appointment.

    I’m assuming the appointment would be gone after the election.

    If the justice gave us some sort of terrible ruling this summer, the Repub candidate could use the result as a campaign aid “See what you get if you let Dems choose Supreme Court Justices”.

    Although maybe no case will come up which has popular effect. But if that’s the case, then the recess appointment wouldn’t mean much.

    If the Hillary Conspiracy or the Socialist win the general election, we get the same result anyway.

  30. Best closing statement – Carson
    Most entertaining debate. But not in good ways.

    Rubio’s closing statement had too many topics.

    Cruz’s closing statement took aim at Trump.

  32. PJ media’s Scott Ott live blog
    Sounds a lot like you Neo with his comments.

    How a conservative can support Trump I just don’t understand. Cruz and Rubio both looked good, would vote for either one and would work for a Cruz campaign, even taking time off from work to go to other states for him.

  36. If the justice gave us some sort of terrible ruling this summer, the Repub candidate could use the result as a campaign aid “See what you get if you let Dems choose Supreme Court Justices”.

    This year is over

  37. Baklava- my kids are grown, but yes, it does resonate. I love Ben Carson and would vote for him in a minute if he is the candidate. In fact I would happily vote for any of them except Trump.

  40. I thought the questions were mostly good and were not aimed at setting up conflict among the candidates. The conflict arose because Trump is combative and he got things rolling. Trump, Bush, and Cruz are all ready to rock and roll at the least provocation. Rubio , Carson, and Kasich not so much. I agree with the observations about Trump. I’ve never liked his style. I liked it even less tonight. And I think the crowd didn’t care much for it, except for that 25-35% who are so angry they don’t care what he says as long as he promises to roll rough-shod over the establishment,

    I liked that Rubio stood up for OIF and pointed out that 9/11 happened because Clinton didn’t take out bin Laden when he had the chances. (Yep, several chances.)

    I’m not wildly enthusiastic about any of them, but I think any one of them would be far better than HRC or the Bern.

    I have long liked John Kasich from his days in the House when he and Newt Gingrich managed to lead Bill Clinton, kicking and screaming, to sign a balanced budget. He is a fiscal conservative, but he doesn’t have a lot of charisma. I watched a couple of his New Hampshire town halls on C-SPAN. He is pretty good in that venue. He was low key and conversational. You got a better feel for him than on these debate stages. That’s why he did so well in New Hampshire. I don’t see him going much further though. Not enough charisma and gravitas.

    I admire Carson as a man who has lived the American dream. I know he is conservative and would be wise as a President. But a President has to have enough charisma and oratorical power to engage the American people in his plans and convince them to follow him. I don’t think Ben has that. At least I haven’t seen it.

    Jeb Bush should have run at a different time. I think he’s competent and would do a workmanlike job, but he, like his dad and brother, doesn’t have the gift of being an inspiring speaker. I hope he drops out soon, but I don’t think he will. He is probably in it until his money runs out.

    I could vote for either Cruz or Rubio. They are both smart, energetic, and I believe they would surround themselves with good advisers. No one is smart enough to be President. Picking good advisers and listening to them is key. That said, neither one of them has all the qualities I would like in a President.

    Trump’s act is not wearing well. He needs to be better prepared for the debates. Talk about robotic. He has said the same things about so many issues, it makes me wince at times. He needs to do more content, less process and name calling. Also, he needs to control his temper. I hope I don’t have to make the choice in November, but I believe he would be a better choice than Hillary or Bernie.

    We know one thing from this debate, the next week in South Carolina is going to be hard ball politics.

  41. The online polls (Drudge etc) all have Trump winning easily. I didn’t see it that way. Cruz and Bush were bound and determined to go after Trump and got into arguments and cross fire that went on for far too long. All three fared poorly because of that.

    Dr. Carson was the voice of calm and reason. I thought he did quite well.

    Rubio didn’t get pushed off his game this time. If debate performances mean much, he helped himself.

    Kasich bored me to death and he’s my governor.

    All in all, an awful debate.

    G.W.Bush became a subject of the debate. Trump attacked him on Iraq and held him responsible for 9/11. There were plenty of clues before 9/11 that a major terror plot was being planned. Unfortunately, Jamie Gorelick’s wall was still in place and the FBI and CIA couldn’t communicate. Bush did not tear down that wall, despite recent major terror attacks. Technically, Bush was responsible because 9/11 happened eight months into his watch. But I think Trump’s attack was unfair.

    On the decision to invade Iraq, Trump had a point. Taking out a ME dictator is destabilising. We saw that in Libya. We saw it in Egypt. At the time I thought Bush was right. After no substantial WMD stocks were uncovered, the Democrats used that fact to destroy Bush politically. Invading Iraq set off a chain of events that are now spiralling out of control. The situation had been stabilized by the end of Bush’s term but then Obama chose to cut and run. The political fallout in 2016 depends on where people stand on G.W.Bush today. Does Jeb win by defending his brother or does Trump win by attacking him? I don’t know the answer. I suspect Trump gains crossover Democrats but loses with staunch GOP voters.

    Just my reactions.

  42. SC is always rough, politics ain’t bean bag there. Bush needs to just go, I really don’t think J. K. will make it to Ohio so we could soon be looking at just the 3 with maybe Carson (beautiful man, wonderful success story and all round nice guy but seriously needs to drop out).

  43. Hearing the pattern of cheers and boos, I wondered WHO was in the audience. Well, here’s the local news in Greenville reporting on it a few days ago:

    It would take a venue that is 11 times the size of the Peace Center to hold everyone who tried to get a ticket through the lottery system.

    GOP leaders said the Peace Center wasn’t large enough, so the South Carolina Republican Party decided not to go with a lottery system.

    “If we had not had it at the Peace Center we probably would have had more people come, but the Peace Center is the venue that CBS chose,” said Chad Groover, chairman of the Greenville County Republican party.

    Groover said supporters who work hard for the party will be rewarded tickets.

    People selected will fill the 1,900 seats that have been made available for the event, according to Groover.

    Groover said the Republican National Committee gives a lot of tickets to supporters. He said more are then allocated for the state party to distribute among the county chairs.

    “I didn’t have hundreds of tickets. I had a couple of dozen tickets,” said Groover.

    Groover said he gave tickets to supporters, including elected officials, who work hard for the party.

    “You’ll have a good mix of people who are donors, people who are donors and workers, and people who are just workers,” said Groover.

    Groover is encouraging everyone to come out and volunteer for the party they support.

    “I think not for the motive of getting debate tickets but for the motive of producing a better society I think getting involved in the political process makes sense,” said Groover.

    Groover said some tickets might become available if people cancel but he said there is no guarantee.

    IOW, a lot of establishment Republicans. That makes sense.

  44. This is the first debate I’ve watched in full. And any man on that stage, including Trump, will be better than anyone the Socialist Party fields.

    But it gave me a stomachache: so much is at stake for America, and these are such perilous times. I just pray we can unite behind the nominee, and that we get the most staunchly patriotic, Constitutional man we can get. Pray that the right may thrive, folks.

  45. PatD, I’ll go ahead and say it. You and Trump are the worst kind of people.

    No. Technically Bush was not responsible. Osama bin Laden and his followers were. There are people who i can say haven’t learned the lessons of 9/11 and those are usually liberal Democrats who can’t seem to connect dots and are letting in thousands of San Bernardino type terrorists.

    As far as I’m concerned that awful display by Trump made me wonder how his wife could stand to look at him

  46. PatD:

    I was wondering what you might say about Trump’s performance tonight.

    It was last summer when I started writing about what Trump has said about Bush—evil, Pelosi should have impeached him, lied about WMDs. I have been amazed and disappointed that this history of Trump’s has been mostly ignored.

    But even then, I was overestimating Trump, because if you had asked me what he would say if asked about his impeachment remarks during a debate, I would have said I’d think he’d take the high road and say something like “Well, I wasn’t in favor of the Iraq War, but no, I don’t really think he should have been impeached.” Something like that, and then just shut up about it and hope the questioner goes to someone else, which would have happened.

    Instead, Trump doubled down and sounded like a leftist maniac. There’s no other way to put it. Bush LIED!! He KNEW there were no WMD’s!! Impeachment, whatever. And by the way, the WTC towers came down during his REIGN!!

    Sad thing is, many people who love Trump will ignore it, just like the Sovietphiles used to do when one of their leaders did something bad.

    This guy completely lacks the temperament, the wisdom, the judgment, and even the politics to be the GOP nominee. He revealed it tonight. But how many of his followers will admit it?

  47. @neo-neocon:

    I agree he sounded like code-pink. Or worse. OTOH, he has a valid point. The US spent a hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe trillions, fighting a war that didn’t need to be fought. Bush won a precarious victory, and Obama, in the tradition of the Democrat party, threw it away, just as they did after the Vietnam war.

    I agree Bush didn’t lie about WMD. Saddam lied. He was trying to convince Iran he had WMD while trying to avoid the sanctions that would be imposed if UN inspectors actually found WMD. Saddam lost when Bush called his bluff. Unfortunately for Bush, and his reputation, Saddam really didn’t have any WMD of significance.

    The problem for Bush supporters was that there was very little evidence to connect Saddam to 9/11. So, going after Saddam to stop him from giving terrorists WMD turned out to be a poor pretext for the Iraq war. I wouldn’t say Bush lied, but he sure got it wrong.

    Trump is right when he says deposing Saddam created instability. Saddam was an evil dictator but he balanced evil dictators on two sides. When the US precipitously withdrew on Obama’s watch, that instability manifested itself in Iran’s virtual take-over of Shia Iraq and the rise of ISIS in Sunni iraq.

    When Saddam was captured, Gaddafi confessed to the US that he had an advanced nuclear weapons program and handed it over to the US. At that point, he was a tamed dictator, and was feeding intelligence on radicals back to the US. When radicals started a revolt against Gaddafi, Obama and Hillary sided with the radicals. We know how well that is turning out.

    Obama also forced Egypt’s dictator out of power. His preferred party, the Muslim Brotherhood, came to power. Egypt erupted in chaos as the Muslim brotherhood ran amok. Eventually, the Egyptian Army stepped in, much to Obama’s chagrin.

    Trump is right to say we should be careful when deposing dictators in the ME.

    The problem is the debate format doesn’t allow for reasoned discussion, so each candidate simply responds with rehearsed sound-bites.

  48. PatD:

    It’s interesting that you spend so much time arguing something that has nothing to do with my point.

    As I said, if Trump had kept it to criticism of the Iraq war, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. There’s plenty of room for criticism. But that’s not my objection, which I also made clear. My objection is “Bush LIED!” and “Towers came down during his REIGN!”

    Leftist madness from your guy.

    No one held a gun to his head and made him say it. He’s said it before, too, all of it. He believes it. He hates Bush; I wrote about it all back in October, here.

    The debate format isn’t my favorite by a longshot, as I’ve said many times before. But it allows for reasoned discussion, up to a point. There’s never been behavior even remotely like Trump’s in a debate, never. He is responsible for his behavior, and it’s shocking that you make any excuses for him in that regard.

    I am happy to see, however, that you admit he sounded like Code Pink.

  49. For those not aware:

    McConnell and others have DELIBERATELY kept Congress “in Session” to STOP Barre Seotoro.

    I know that’s a shocker.

    But it’s true.

    Barry has been denied the ability to effect recess appointments — for YEARS now.

  50. @neo-neocon:

    Trump’s response was to Jeb, who said that GWB had protected us. Jeb should have added “after 9/11”. Otherwise, he invited the response he got.

    There were numerous intelligence failings prior to 9/11. Most of them came about from the Clinton administration. Jamie Gorelick’s wall was the most infamous (that lady deserves a book documenting her malevolent incompetence. How she ended up on the 9/11 Commission beggars understanding.)

    But 9/11 didn’t come out of the blue. It was preceded by the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the bombing of the USS Cole. The US should have been on high alert and artificial barriers to sharing intelligence should have been removed.

    On that basis, there is cause to assign some culpability to the Bush administration.

    There were also simple administrative failures, since all but one of the hijackers had overstayed their visas. Those failures are also owned the Bush administration.

    Hindsight is always perfect, and I don’t blame Bush personally for the failures under his watch. But, mistakes were made, and on his watch.

  51. “There’s never been behavior even remotely like Trump’s in a debate, never. ”

    None that I have seen in my lifetime. Spent a fair portion of the debate in shock at what I was witnessing. And the tweets on the split screen seemed pretty shocked as well, esp. Frank Luntz.

    I could never have pictured 1) a candidate that would do this and 2) moderators that had so little control over both the flow of the debate and the audience “participation”.

    I thought the ABC debate was so poorly managed that Peter Jennings was turning in his grave, but this was even worse. And yet, CBSN will spin it as a “ratings” success, I’ll wager.

  52. Obama will not attempt a recess appointment since it would give Republicans free pass on denying a permanent appointment until after the next election. Remember, recess appointments expire after the end of a Congress which in this case is next January. The benefits to progressives of Obama doing a recess appointment are minimal since most of the important cases before the court this session already favor them at the lower court level, and a 4-4 tie is just as good as a 5-4 win.

  53. As i said …. worst.

    Relitigating something we all know yet refusing to see you and Trump are behaving badly.

    It’s over for Trump. Each time he does this he loses a percent and his negatives go up.

    As Rubio said, thank God Bush was in office and not Gore

  54. Yancey is in accord with what many people have been saying, that it is not strategic for Obama to make a recess appointment even if he does have the power. Whether he does is another question based on the uncertain nature of the current Senate recess. See Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit blog for some discussions of this.

  55. I realize that here isn’t time in that debate format for actual discussion, but I just wish one of them, or even, heaven forfend, the moderator, had said, “Tell us, Mr. Trump, what you would do if the Director of National Intelligence came into your office, thumped his fist on the desk, and said, “It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President, that Country X has weapons of mass destruction, and every other intelligence agency in the world agrees.”

    I can only hope that Trump’s lefty positions, obnoxious behavior, and thin skin will lead to his downfall. With all respect, Trumpsters, how can you support a man whose closing statement is, “Vote for me because I’m rich!”

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