Estrada Nomination Not First Court Nomination Fillibuster

An interesting philosophical question was posed as follows by ***Dave:

Dean Esmay offers a hypothetical situation:

Let’s pretend that the election of 2004 is the worst-imaginable in the entire history of the Democratic Party. Not only does Bush win re-election, but Republicans win every race--every single race--nationwide in America. Every House race, every Senate race, every governorship, all of them.

I don’t just mean the “competitive” races. I mean, the completely impossible happens, and Republicans win every race, everywhere they’ve fielded a candidate.

I grant you, I am positing the impossible. This is a thought-experiment. But tell me: what happens as a result?

I think his answer is a correct one, based on what’s happened the last two or three decades when one party or the other has actually seized control of the White House and Congress at the same time.
And, yes, you can play the same game with the Democrats, and get largely the same answer.

The context of the discussion on both of these blogs had to do with third parties and the two-party system. I made a comment on Dave's site noting how critical the Senate was in the two-party system. While researching my comment, I found the following little nugget on the Senate historical site. This should be placed in the context that all over talk radio is the premise that the Estrada nomination was sui generis. This quote puts that concept to bed:

October 1, 1968
Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment

In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren's timing.

In the final months of his presidency, Johnson shared Warren's concerns about Nixon and welcomed the opportunity to add his third appointee to the Court. To replace Warren, he nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime confidant. Anticipating Senate concerns about the prospective chief justice's liberal opinions, Johnson simultaneously declared his intention to fill the vacancy created by Fortas' elevation with Appeals Court Judge Homer Thornberry. The president believed that Thornberry, a Texan, would mollify skeptical southern senators.

A seasoned Senate vote-counter, Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas. The president took encouragement from indications that his former Senate mentor, Richard Russell, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen would support Fortas, whose legal brilliance both men respected.

The president soon lost Russell's support, however, because of administration delays in nominating the senator's candidate to a Georgia federal judgeship. Johnson urged Senate leaders to waste no time in convening Fortas' confirmation hearings. Responding to staff assurances of Dirksen's continued support, Johnson told an aide, "Just take my word for it. I know [Dirksen]. I know the Senate. If they get this thing drug out very long, we're going to get beat. Dirksen will leave us."

Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination, privately observing that if he had another term, "the Fortas appointment would have been different."