The Constitutional stipulation is:
ARTICLE 2. SECTION 2.
2 He [the President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to ... appoint ... Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States ...

If a President nominated a person that the Senate discovered was an escaped prisoner, formerly serving a life sentence for multiple murders, the consent would not be appropriate.

But do you think the Founders intended, or the Constitutional wording means that if a Senator doesn't think the otherwise fully qualified candidate is pretty enough, or if her purse doesn't match her belt, that Senator should reject that nominee?
Worst Debate Tactic Ever: Take your opponent's argument to a ridiculous extreme and then attack the extreme.

Never thought I'd see YOU do it, though.

The People elected the President because they wanted him to make these appointments.
And part of the problem with allowing partisanship to play a material role in it is, that's a two-edged sword.
So if the Dems. block the Reps. nominees, and the Reps. block the Dems. nominees, the judiciary will suffer at the hands of the legislature.
That's not consistent with the "co-equal branch" concept of our three branch government.
Nope.  And that's why I think, along with not a few others, that all this NOMINATION and CONFIRMATION business should be done away with, and have Federal Judges and Supreme Court Justices be ELECTED to their positions.  And not FOR LIFE, either.

But hey, what the hell... that would take a Constitutional Amendment too, wouldn't it?

"Illegitimate"? Who gets to decide what reasons were or weren't illegitimate ..."
Even if there is no explicit, written code of criteria for this, objective standards can well apply, as they do in courts of law, and in other instances of the confluence of government, and exercise of judgment.
I'll just try this again.  They don't have to GIVE a reason why they vote yea or nay.  All they have to do is VOTE.


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SGT. JIRI TREBISSKY H&D SAS

"When the winds of change blow, some people
build walls and others build windmills."
~ Chinese proverb