Linkage: Souter, Specter and Franken

By Fester:

NPR reports that Justice Souter is retiring as soon as there is a replacement for him.  This is an opportunity for some very hardball linkage politics enabled by Senator Specter.

NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the court's current term.

The court has completed hearing oral arguments for the year and will be issuing rulings and opinions until the end of June.

Souter is expected to remain on the bench until a successor has been chosen and confirmed,

Right now, Senator Specter (D-PA--- very strange to write that!) still counts as a Republican on the Judiciary Committee's roster.  The Judiciary Committee has a very strange little rule on bringing matters to a vote: [h/t Congress Matters]

The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.

As long as Arlen Specter agrees and supports a nominee, anything can be forced out of the committee and onto the Senate floor without the Republicans having any leverage at the committee stage.  And once a nominee is on the Senate floor, the minimal blocking coalition must contain both Senators Snowe and Collins and a Democrat.  Specter's approval was always a key veto point in the Supreme Court nominee process, and his approval is fairly well correlated with both Senators from Maine, so basically, there is no viable minimal blocking coalition. 

And here is the linkage, seat Franken, replace Specter with a reliable Republican vote on the Judiciary Committee and the Republicans have a potential practical  minimally viable blocking coalition established at some point in the process.  Otherwise, there are a few theoretical veto points but no practical ones. 

NB:  As I wrote earlier this year, I have no problems with a Senate minority attempting to filibuster life time appointments to the Supreme Court as those appointments are potential game changers.  I stand by this belief.