Andrew Weissmann: Senate Has a ‘Constitutional Duty’ to Reject Unqualified Nominees

RUSH EXCERPT:

WEISSMANN: “So I find the argument I mean, to put it in a nutshell, preposterous, the idea that you’re supposed to vote for someone because you could think of a worse person. Well, guess what? You can actually say no to this person and the next person, the normal route, the what happens in a normal case is if you put somebody up who is not qualified, the Senate is sending a message that the next person needs to be more qualified, not less qualified. And that’s the way it works. It is simply not the case that you get to have the nominee, and the Senate gets to abdicate its constitutional duty to decide whether it will confirm somebody, because they can think of a worse person. They have the power to say no to someone who’s not qualified, and to say no to someone who’s put up, again, who is even less qualified. I just find that to be a really, truly absurd argument. And under that theory, there’s no point in having the Senate confirmation process, which is in the Constitution, and you might as well just have”