Trump withdrew one appeals-court nominee Tuesday and nominated another, because even a frantic effort to stock the federal bench can get stuck behind somebody's seating preference.

Out goes federal district judge Lee Rudofsky. In comes Arkansas Supreme Court Justice J. Cody Hiland. Reuters reports that Arkansas Republican Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton favored someone other than Rudofsky for the Eighth Circuit seat.

The White House and Senate Republicans are racing to confirm judges before Democrats take control of the Senate in January. But first, a delicate internal question: are we rushing the correct Republican through the door?

Hiland had expected the appeals nomination earlier. Instead, he was offered a federal district judgeship and declined it, he told an audience in August. Federal district judge: apparently the replacement item you remove from your grocery order because you specifically requested appellate.

The Daily Heckler: five or six selected stories.
Political satire for your morning inbox.

The lifetime-job checkout lane is moving, and somebody has called for a manager.

Boozman says home-state senators should meaningfully influence nominations. That's a recognizable Senate prerogative. Rudofsky acknowledges that confirmation without their support isn't practically possible. Nobody here has to be secretly corrupt for the public spectacle to be ridiculous. The openly stated process supplies plenty.

If Trump fills the seat, Republican presidents will have appointed ten of the court's eleven active judges, six of them Trump's choices. Hiland is only nominated; confirmation hasn't happened.

Fine. The Senate can examine him. Please do. This court hears federal appeals from seven states, which seems a sufficient reason to treat the vacancy as something more consequential than the last good table before the restaurant changes owners.

The country gets the judge. The politicians get to settle who had the reservation.