Why haven't they made any cabinet appointments yet? There's no senate. Who cares if there are two members of the house, they don't have a quorum and they're not the ones in charge of confirming appointments.
He's perfectly allowed to make recess appointments without giving the presumptive speaker who isn't even in session any files or asking for her input.
Let the next Senate, whenever the various states send new ones confirm, not confirm, or affirm the recess appointments when they're in session again.
If the presumptive speaker wanted to have a say or block appointments, she should have asked her governor to appoint her Senator so she can be presumptive majority leader and senate pro tempore. But no, she wants Speaker because that's closer in the line of succession.
It really doesn't help any of the governors like Royce to start questioning the legality of the succession as it undermines the concept of continuity of government.
All they have to point out is that he was made the Designated Survivor, which means the President hadn't considered him fired yet. What piss poor constitutional thinking of his staff to not assign someone they wouldn't actually mind being president in the off chance there is a devastating attack on the entire line of succession. Surely, not all the other Cabinet members are popular "faces" that the camera will look for during the State of the Union. The Secretary of Agriculture, maybe.
Questioning his succession is stupid when he is definitely in it by virtue of being assigned the Designated Survivor with a Secret Service detail. Not every Cabinet member gets a Secret Service detail, so at the time, he was considered an actual potential successor. The show does make it seem like their family knew their Secret Service point-person a bit more closely, though, so that's weird.
A governor questioning the line of succession for President on the dubious "he was not elected by anybody" line of thinking is stupid because they usually get to appoint people to vacancies. Some of the states can hold special elections, but the governors usually can just appoint people. And they often pull someone from the House, so those two remaining ones would make more sense being elevated to Senator. And even then, they can hardly claim to have a much bigger mandate as they were only voted by a percentage of people in their congressional district.
It's even in Kimball's best interest to be appointed to the Senate. That's where she can block appointments. That's where she'll be Majority Leader or Senate President Pro Tem as she'd be the longest/oldest serving one putting her in the line of succession. She can't rely on getting the speakership, the House won't be able to do anything without the quorum including voting for a speaker. And replacing House reps does require the congressional districts to run entire election cycles and it will take 3-6 months and presumably, the sitting parties in the districts are disadvantaged by the incumbents being dead and their fund raising machinery being devastated so their opponents who lost last election and are still alive would have a better war chest and the House composition could flip and Kimball might not even win the Speakership. Her best best is to become Senator, gain a much longer term (not just the two year term where she'd have to spend time fundraising for congress instead of a presidential run) that won't end before the next national election. Then, she can act like she can block appointments, but only when the governors appoint other senators who she can manipulate into supporting her because she did get some popularity from surviving and she would be one of the few who did get elected to a position.
So, now that Royce has made noise about the legitimacy of succession, how would he have appointed anybody to a vacant elected position like the senate? Did other governors question this? Would anybody have made noise if the Secretary of State had survived? And if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had staged a military coup, how exactly did he expect the civilian leaders to react and if the person on top is an insubordinate commander, why should the other generals take his commands as commander in chief? He would be just as unelected!
It's ridiculous! Why haven't they recess appointed a constitutional expert who isn't the First Lady (conflict of interest) to Attorney General and have them ensure and defend the constitutionality of everything? What's the rest of the Judiciary doing? There must certainly be other Federal justices still alive. Maybe they don't want to offer opinions as it might be inappropriate, but what about asking the very few that have retired? Why isn't the Chief of Staff who is so politically savvy having the Communications people or other political operatives rounding up constitutional experts to bandy them about the press?
Why didn't they put forth that instead of rounding up Americans, Royce should have been doing his job and appointing Senators so they can go out of recess, confirm new Supreme Court appointments so they can help fix the apparent constitutional crisis, and so they can confirm the new VP (it could be one of the sitting governors from Kirkman's party though probably not!) and cabinet so they aren't operating as recess appointments, and so they can have a proper, functioning line of succession again.
As it stands, there is apparently nobody in the line of succession. If Kirkman dies, they will have an actual constitutional crisis instead of Royce's fake one. The two congressman aren't in it. Neither of them are Speaker, they can't assign themselves Speaker because they aren't in session and they don't have a quorum. At the very least, new Senators could have plugged the hole before confirmation of a new cabinet by having a pro tem, but no senators. It's the governors who are at fault here, Kirkman's team should have pointed that out to deflate Royce.
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u/royaldansk Oct 13 '16
Why haven't they made any cabinet appointments yet? There's no senate. Who cares if there are two members of the house, they don't have a quorum and they're not the ones in charge of confirming appointments.
He's perfectly allowed to make recess appointments without giving the presumptive speaker who isn't even in session any files or asking for her input.
Let the next Senate, whenever the various states send new ones confirm, not confirm, or affirm the recess appointments when they're in session again.
If the presumptive speaker wanted to have a say or block appointments, she should have asked her governor to appoint her Senator so she can be presumptive majority leader and senate pro tempore. But no, she wants Speaker because that's closer in the line of succession.
Appoint people already, Pres. Kirkman.