re: #97 Blind Frog Belly White

Yeah…no. I’d say it’s pretty much unarguable that the Founders never intended for the Senate to be able to deny a President’s authority to make nominations.

That isn’t precisely what the Senate is doing (although it has the same effect in practice). Once Obama has made a nomination, he had done his constitutional duty. The rest is up to the Senate, and if there is no ‘advice and consent’, the nomination doesn’t go through.

To put the question another way, what provision of the constitution would the Senate be violating if Obama makes a nomination and the Senate takes no action at all on it? One might argue that the Senate has an obligation to vote, but would things really be much better if any Obama nomination got a same-day rejection on a party line vote?