In my new Confirmation Tales post, titled “Senate Republicans Learn to Use Their Majority Muscle,” I interview John Yoo, who replaced me on Senator Hatch’s Judiciary Committee staff in 1995, about his year handling judicial nominations. An excerpt:
EW: How did Senator Hatch deal with the pushback from more junior Republicans on the committee?
JY: Senator Hatch was very savvy. He wanted to get nominees who met his deference standard through the committee process, but he was happy to give other committee Republicans every opportunity to test them on the way. Once the nominees were reported to the Senate floor, Hatch wasn’t interested in using any political capital to get them through. He especially wasn’t going to use up credits to push through nominees in an environment where Dole was using the nominees to draw sharp distinctions with Clinton as we went into the presidential election cycle. I don’t recall Hatch ever asking a favor from leadership to move a nominee to a floor vote.
The pushback from freshman senators also gave Hatch cover to negotiate with or even slow-walk Clinton. Hatch would consult with the White House, which would sometimes give him advance warning that a nominee was under consideration. Hatch now had leverage now to say, “You might want to pick Merrick Garland rather than someone like Peter Edelman, because I won’t be able to stop Jon Kyl and Fred Thompson from going on the attack.” Or he might say to the White House, “I know you are unhappy with the way Garland is not moving, but I have to give everyone full time for investigation and consideration or my right flank will claim they were jammed and refuse to play ball on nominees.”
I invite you to sign up for Confirmation Tales.