Eat It, Repugs!

Fifteen's a good start, but now that even the White House must realize that no amount of playing nice is going to get a single vote from repugs, why not just recess appoint the whole kit-n-caboodle and watch repug heads explode?

Not to mention that this kind of standing-up-to-bullies is what mid-term voters like.

From Talking Points Memo:

The White House has just announced that President Obama has made fifteen recess appointments, including several for hot-button nominees. These are appointees Republicans refused to allow votes on and for which the president's supporters have been pressing for recess appointees.

Notable on the list are Craig Becker to NLRB and Chai Feldblum to EEOC.

In arguing for the appointments the press release states: "President Bush had made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency, but he was not facing the same level of obstruction. At this time in 2002, President Bush had only 5 nominees pending on the floor. By contrast, President Obama has 77 nominees currently pending on the floor, 58 of whom have been waiting for over two weeks and 44 of those have been waiting more than a month."

Read the whole list in the press release here.

Steve Benen has some welcome correctives to the repug lies on recess appointments:

1. Health care reform passed through an entirely legitimate process. No rules were broken, no traditions were ignored. In short, Kyl doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's talking about. The only tradition that's been ignored of late is the one that allows the Senate to vote on legislation, and it's Kyl's party that is ignoring the way the Senate used to, and was designed to, operate.

2. Recess appointments aren't exactly new, at least not in recent years. Clinton made 139 during his two terms, and Bush made 179. Obama's total thus far? Zero. Two recess appointments, in this context, hardly constitutes "arrogance of power."

3. A majority of the Senate supports both Becker and Pearce. Kyl and his GOP cohorts want the president to ignore the will of the Senate -- while demanding that Obama honor "the will of the Senate."

4. Kyl considered Becker "controversial," and thus ineligible for a recess appointment. But Bush used recess appointments on extremists like Charles Pickering and John Bolton, and did so with Kyl's blessing.

UPDATE, 1:39 p.m. - EmptyWheel at FireDogLake points out the most prominent name not on that list: Dawn Johnsen, nominated as Assistant Attorney General a year ago to clean up the cesspool Smirky/Darth created at the Office of Legal Counsel.