According to the White House, Obama’s first-term nominees took an average of 225 days to be confirmed, compared with 175 days for Bush and 98 days for Clinton.
Ruemmler said that there has been “very, very little substantive opposition to any of the president’s judicial nominees.” She pointed to the case of Robert E. Bacharach, a district court judge from Oklahoma whom Obama nominated last year for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
Bacharach’s home-state senators, Tom Coburn and James M. Inhofe, both Republicans, supported him. “I like the guy,” Inhofe told the Oklahoman. “I told him that it’s not very often the White House and I agree on anything.”
Still, Senate Republicans filibustered Bacharach’s nomination. They gave no specific reason other than a vow to block all of Obama’s circuit court nominees because 2012 was a presidential election year. In 2004 and 2008, Senate Democrats did much the same to Bush’s election-year nominees.
After 263 days of waiting, Bacharach’s nomination came to the floor for a vote on Feb. 25. It passed, 93 to 0.
Article Appeared @http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/changing-the-faces-of-federal-judges/2013/03/03/493ef398-8438-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_graphic.html