Eleanor Clift Quotes

The role of the nominee in the confirmation process is like that of the bridegroom. Stay out of the way and be on time.

For roughly two hundred years, politics has influenced dramatically the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices. Presidents routinely have selected nominees to the Court based on political considerations…

You don’t hold Presidential nominees for Attorney General hostage to other issues.

President Obama had two Supreme Court nominees in his first term. There was no filibuster against them.

What happens in the Senate is the Republicans sink to the lowest common denominator.

The myopic obsession of the Tea Party with destroying health care reform and wounding the president has led Republicans astray.

I think the Democrats are catering to them, but, you know, in the entire history of the United States of America, there has never been a judge who has been refused a vote when there was a majority of Senators willing to vote for his confirmation, never in history.

No president gets all his judges.

The Supreme Court has made itself into a political institution … It has become a political prize and a political position.

If someone agrees with you they're a statesman. If someone disagrees with you, they're a politician.

I suggest that the executive appoint or nominate the Judges to the Senate which should have the right of rejecting or approving.

The political event of last week is the opposition of [Roscoe] Conkling to the New York appointments. This is a test case. The Senators generally prefer to confirm Merritt and Graham. But many, perhaps a majority, will not oppose Conkling on the question. Senatorial courtesy, the Senatorial prerogative, and the fear of Conkling's vengeance in the future, control them.

We are successful. The New York nominations, Merritt and Burt, were confirmed against Arthur and Cornell, after five or six hours' debate by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-four.

Justice Thomas' race and ideology accounted for his nomination

The most important rule for a nominee in a confirmation hearing is the 80/20 rule. If they are talking 80% of the time and you are talking 20%, you’re winning. If its 60/40, it means you are arguing. If it is 50/50, it means you have lost and you’d better throw in the towel.

Partisan politics and the reorganization of government agencies since my tenure as a Federal health official have made it very difficult to confirm strong leaders in critical positions and to coordinate efforts across agencies.

Some of the most impressive judicial nominees are grossly mistreated.

Jon Tester needs to be held accountable for his extreme partisan liberal record of supporting President Obama's judicial nominees 99% of the time but then opposing President Trump's nominees.

It is … not unconstitutional for the House of Representatives to refuse to fund the government, or for the Senate to deny confirmation to all presidential nominees. But since only the House can originate money bills, and only the Senate can confirm nominees, the system cannot tolerate such intransigence for long.

Where trial-court and appeals-court nominees were once routinely confirmed on voice vote, they are now routinely subjected to ideological litmus tests, filibusters, and vicious interest-group attacks.

The Democrats can engage in the most reprehensible, mean-spirited, vile, vicious verbal attacks known in politics, and they get praised for it.

Having been on the front lines of the confirmation battles involving Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, I know firsthand what is at stake when the Senate exercises its 'advise and consent' power over federal judges.

Partisanship has gotten worse and worse.

Something about the Clintons sets the GOP to howling at the moon.

Millions of dollars, millions of dollars are spent by Planned Parenthood to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives and to the Senate. This isn't about babies; this is about money.