Republicans can try to say it ain\u2019t so, but a newly developed statistical measure says it is: The GOP\u2019s delaying tactics and outright obstruction of President Obama\u2019s judicial nominees have reached epic proportions. According to Greg Sargent,<\/a> at the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog:<\/p>\n

Dr. Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who focuses on judicial nominations, has developed what he calls an \u201cIndex of Obstruction and Delay\u201d designed to measure levels of obstructionism.<\/p>\n

Goldman calculates his Index of Obstruction and Delay by adding together the number of unconfirmed nominations, plus the number of nominations that took more than 180 days to confirm (not including nominations towards the end of a given Congress) and dividing that by the total number of nominations. During the last Congress, Goldman calculates, the Index of Obstruction and Delay for Obama circuit court nominations was 0.9524.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the highest that\u2019s ever been recorded,\u201d [says Goldman]. \u00a0\u201cIn this last Congress it approached total obstruction or delay.\u201d<\/p>\n

By comparison, Goldman ran the same measurement on the 108^{th<\/sup> Congress, from 2003-2004, when George W. Bush was president, and Republicans controlled the Senate. The Index of Destruction and Delay for that period was a much lower 0.6176.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n}

Anybody who\u2019s been paying attention could have guessed that. But it\u2019s helpful to see the hard numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans can try to say it ain\u2019t so, but a newly developed statistical measure says it is: The GOP\u2019s delaying tactics and outright obstruction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,572,10,16,202,1675],"tags":[153,1953],"yoast_head":"\n