The Senate Judiciary Committee just held a long overdue vote on Third Circuit nominee Phil Restrepo of Pennsylvania.  To no one’s surprise, he has the committee’s unanimous support.  His nomination now moves to the Senate floor, where it is up to Mitch McConnell to schedule a confirmation vote.

So let’s review some of the reasons McConnell should let the Senate vote to confirm him quickly:

• The vacancy Restrepo would fill has been designated a judicial emergency.
• There’s a second vacancy on the same court, adding to the strain on the serving judges, as well as the parties before them.
• Restrepo has the bipartisan support of his home state senators.
• He has been vetted and approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee.
• The vacancy Restrepo would fill has been open for more than two years already.
• He was nominated eight months ago, way back in November of last year.
• The Senate needs to make up for lost time, since committee chairman Chuck Grassley refused to even hold a hearing for Restrepo until seven months after the nomination.  (Senator Pat Toomey’s collaboration with Grassley by withholding his “blue slip” made that delay possible.)
• Restrepo would expand experiential diversity on the Third Circuit, becoming the first judge on that court to have experience as a public defender.
• He’d be the first Latino from Pennsylvania on the Third Circuit.
• Everyone on the ABA panel that looked at his qualifications agreed that he was qualified.  In fact, a substantial majority of the panel said he was “well qualified,” which is the highest rating.

Now let’s look at the reasons McConnell might have for refusing to hold a timely confirmation vote:

• The nominating president is a Democrat.
• The nominating president is a Democrat.
• The nominating president is a Democrat.

It’s pretty clear that the reasons for a quick confirmation vote are a lot better than the reasons for delay.  But given McConnell’s appetite for obstruction, it’s equally clear that he is more likely to choose needless delay.

The person best positioned to help Restrepo is McConnell’s fellow Republican, Senator Toomey.  As noted above, despite his public statements praising Restrepo, Toomey collaborated with Grassley when the committee chair was looking for a way to delay the nominee’s hearing.  Appropriately enough, Toomey got slammed in the Pennsylvania press for this until he finally relented.

Then when faced with the knowledge that the committee would needlessly delay its vote by at least two weeks unless he intervened with Grassley, Toomey not only did nothing, he offered an amazingly lame explanation for his refusal to stand up for Restrepo.

It makes you wonder just how much Toomey’s statements of support are worth.

Toomey can do better.  He can talk to McConnell, who has every reason to be responsive to members of his caucus.  And while Toomey’s talking about the needs of Pennsylvanians, he can also remind McConnell how the Democratic-controlled Senate treated George W. Bush’s Third Circuit nominee from Pennsylvania in his last two years.

Like Restrepo, nominee Thomas Hardiman was a district court judge; he had been nominated to the federal bench by Bush earlier in the president’s term.  Like Restrepo, Hardiman was nominated to fill a judicial emergency.  And like Restrepo, Hardiman had the unanimous support of the Judiciary Committee.

And in March of 2007, then-Majority Leader Reid scheduled a confirmation vote just one week after the committee vote.

So is a confirmation vote for Restrepo this month too much to ask?  Perhaps the question is whether it’s too much for Pat Toomey to ask.