Third, there has long been a weird asymmetry in approaches to Federal judicial appointments, with Republicans by and large taking the position that the President is entitled to the judges of his choosing, and the Democrats taking the position that the courts are a crucial field for imposing their policies and therefore conservative judicial candidates must be opposed by any means available.  Bork? Estrada? Owens? Saad, Boyle, Myers, Haynes and Wallace?  Keisler, Robert Conrad, Matthews, and Glen Conrad? William Smith, Shalom Stone, Loretta Preska, Gene Pratter, Paul Diamond? And literally dozens more. The list of excellent Republican judicial candidates blocked purely on ideological grounds is long; the list of Democratic nominees blocked on ideological grounds is... Goodwin Liu.  And Liu would have been a poor choice for an appellate judicial position on any grounds, given his lack of any relevant experience and his publicly demonstrated bias.

And make no mistake, the Democrats have found obstruction pays.  Not only have they kept off the bench many superb conservatives, Obama has filled at least nine Court of Appeals seats, and thirteen District Court seats, that the Democrats blocked Republican nominees from. In fourteen cases, the Democrats blocked second and even third nominees for the same seat.  Federal judicial appointments are not merit selection; they are an exercise in bare-knuckled power politics.