Butts Nomination The Epitome Of Puerile Republican Obstruction

It is now 118 days since Justice Antonin Scalia died and President Obama’s choice to replace him on the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, has still not had a hearing in the 86 days since he was nominated. Senate Republicans have made it clear they have no plans to hold hearings until they see how they fare in the November election and, if Republicans still maintain the Senate while losing the presidency, they may never fill that ninth slot on the Supreme Court.

Ever since his election way back in 2008, Republican hatred for Obama, otherwise known as Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS),  has shaped their policies more than anything else.  Mitch McConnell’s goal for Obama’s first term was to make sure he was “a one-term President” and that laid the groundwork for Republican obstruction. And nowhere is that obstruction more clear than in Senate Republicans unwillingness to confirm so many of Obama’s appointees, especially in the judiciary – Merrick Garland is just the most notable.  As a New York Times editorial noted yesterday, there are now 83 unfilled federal judgeships nationwide, 30 of which are in districts with such an overwhelming backlog of cases that are classified as judicial emergencies.  Currently, 37 Obama appointees have not made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and, like Merrick Garland, 30 of them have not even had a hearing. And Chuck Grassley, chairman of that committee, has made it clear that no hearings at all will take place until late July at the earliest. Seventeen nominees who have somehow made it out of the Judiciary Committee are still waiting for a full vote in the Senate in order to be confirmed.  Apparently, Senate Republicans do not believe in a fully functioning judiciary and the Constitutional right of every American to a speedy trial. As Elizabeth Warren said yesterday after Republicans blocked another attempt to get a vote on fifteen of those seventeen judges, “Senate Republicans have made it their priority to keep key positions empty for so long as possible, to hamstring efforts to protect consumers and workers, to delay efforts to hold large corporations accountable, to slow down work to promote equality.” She continued that  “[t]he view of Senate Republicans seems to be pretty simple — if government isn’t working for them, for their rich friends or for their right-wing allies, then Senate Republicans won’t let it work for anyone.” She ended comments by saying of the Republicans’ obstruction, “it is small, it is petty and it is absurd”.

But just to show you how petty and puerile the Republican obstruction has become in response to its ODS, just take a look at what happened to Obama’s choice to become ambassador to the Bahamas. Cassandra Butts, after a distinguished career in public service, was nominated for that position in early 2014. After a Senate hearing in May, 2014, her long wait began.  First, Ted Cruz put a hold on all State Department positions in retaliation for the administration’s Iran nuclear deal. Then Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas held up the confirmations of Butts as well as the ambassadors to Norway and Sweden, again, over an unrelated political dispute. Cotton eventually relented and let the other two ambassadors get confirmation votes, but he still held up Butts’ confirmation. Butts eventually went to see Cotton about why he was still blocking her and his response was, and is, simply astounding.  Cotton said that he knew that Obama and Butts had been classmates at Harvard Law School and that she was a personal friend of Obama’s. By blocking the confirmation of Obama’s personal friend, Cotton felt that he could inflict special pain on the President! Incredibly, even today, Cotton’s office does not dispute the accuracy of this story!

The ambassadors to Norway and Sweden waited for around 850 and 500 days to be confirmed. Obviously, diplomatic missions have a continuity even without an ambassador, but we do have ambassadors for a reason. Sadly, Cassandra Butts died suddenly on May 25th from a case of acute leukemia that went undiagnosed until it was too late. She had been waiting 835 days to be confirmed and the US has now gone without an ambassador to the Bahamas for over 1,600 days, that’s nearly 5 years. And all this was not over any policy or competency issue at all – it was simply to inflict some personal pain on the President.

This is beyond absurd, beyond petty, it is simply puerile. It is high time that Republicans stop acting like children and do the jobs they were elected to do.