Doug Kendall notes that, for all the Republican whining about the obstruction of federal court nominees under the Bush administration, things have gotten even slower during Obama's first term:
By this point in his first term (July 2002), President George W. Bush had had 61 nominees confirmed to the federal bench, to President Obama's 36, and the Senate took less time to confirm Bush's nominees on average than they have taken to confirm Obama's. ... From the date they were approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bush's nominees waited an average of 16 days to receive a vote on the Senate floor. By contrast, the average time from Committee vote to floor vote for Obama's nominees is 82 days (so far).
Not all of the blame for the paltry number of confirmations rests with Senate Republicans, though. Obama has also been notably and inexplicably slow to put nominees forward, and getting nominees confirmed is about to get a lot harder after the midterms.
Of course the larger story here is that the Senate is broken, and the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Given a breakdown in traditional norms of comity and weak party discipline -- norms that aren't coming back, and at least in the latter case shouldn't be mourned -- Republicans are just acting consistently with their incentives. If the rules allow you to slow the appointment of new judges to currently Republican-dominated federal courts, why wouldn't you take advantage of them? Until the rules change, the Senate is going to get more and more dysfunctional.
-- Scott Lemieux
