Posted on 03/07/2005 3:56:39 AM PST by Elkiejg
WASHINGTON -- Conservative misgivings about Sen. Arlen Specter's rise this year to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee were validated last week. Without consulting the Republican leadership, Specter launched a procedure that undercuts party strategy for confirming President Bush's judicial nominees. Ironically, however, Democrats are so intransigent that not even Specter's temporizing has moderated them so far.
Specter, on his own, picked William Myers, a former cattle industry lobbyist, as the nominee blocked by Democrats in the last Congress who will go first in the new Congress. He did so because he figured that Myers, among 16 blocked Bush appellate nominees, had the best chance to get 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. But, as Specter is well aware, the Republican party is not interested in confirming judges with 60 votes. It wants to re-establish the constitutional principle that a simple majority of 51 votes is sufficient for confirmation.
This creates a peculiar situation, with control of the federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, at stake. The last outcome the Republican leadership wants would be a filibuster against Myers broken by 60 senators voting for cloture. That precedent would restrict what kind of Bush Supreme Court nominee could get through the Senate. Republican leaders want to use parliamentary procedures to confirm judges with a simple majority -- the so-called "nuclear option."
Democrats are so antagonized by this option that Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the 87-year-old dean of the Senate, compared it on the Senate floor last week to Hitler's "enabling act" that seized power in Germany. The likelihood that Democrats will respond by bringing Senate business to a standstill leads to the possible strategy of ensuring that popular legislation -- perhaps the highway bill -- will be on the floor at that point.
In order to get the Judiciary chairmanship, Specter promised to support all of Bush's judicial nominees. But he did not promise the order in which he would send nominees to the floor. He must have known the first choice of Majority Leader Bill Frist and the other Republican leaders was Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a conservative member of the California Supreme Court. A Democratic filibuster stopped her in the last Congress.
The spectacle of Democrats blocking an African-American woman from becoming an appellate judge is welcomed by Republicans. With no chance to get 60 senators supporting her, Frist will then make a point of order to be upheld by Vice President Dick Cheney, presiding over the Senate. If a simple majority upholds him, Brown is confirmed -- and the war is won.
Specter is vague about the "nuclear option" but has been seeking to unblock some blocked nominee. Myers would seem an unlikely choice. As a lobbyist and former Interior Department solicitor, he provides a cornucopia of positions antagonizing the left. Myers is the first judicial nominee ever opposed by the National Wildlife Federation and the National Congress of American Indians.
Specter chose Myers because he thought him the best chance to get 60 votes. Although never before accused of naivete, old pol Specter was taken in by the bait-and-switch tactics used by liberal Democrat Ken Salazar last year to win a Senate seat from the pale "Red" state of Colorado. As state attorney general, Salazar strongly endorsed Idaho lawyer Myers for the heavily liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. As a senator, he joined Democratic colleagues asking Bush to withdraw Myers's name.
Indeed, Democrats are so addicted to the taste of judicial blood that they apparently will not confirm Myers even to trap Republicans into the 60-vote precedent. Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, last week declared Myers unacceptable.
Specter can decide which nominee comes first out of the Judiciary Committee, though he has pledged to move all of them to the Senate floor. But he will not decide which one is taken up first by the Senate. That is the prerogative of the leadership, which is inclined to go with Justice Brown or possibly Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen. But if the leaders are sure Specter cannot get 60 votes, Myers might be sent to the floor to show that not even 58 or 59 senators can confirm a judge.
My conscience is clear: I voted for Bush in 2004, but did not vote for Specter, instead voted for Jim Clymer.
Just because the GOP put lipstick on the pig, Specter, doesn't change the fact that he's still a damn pig.
Arlen Sphincter must go.
I'd prefer demotion, but I'll take the cancer.
How about, he doesn't have the votes?
GWB Bush and Sen Santorum campaigned for Arlen Specter and put him over the top in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, over pro-lifer Pat Toomey. The strategy was to lockup PA for Bush 2004.
Now Specter is repaying GWB Bush and Santorum by belittling and demeaning Mr Bush's conservative supporters, and threatening to hold up Mr Bush's judicial appointees.
(And we won't forget that RNC head Ken Mehlman hand-picked PA's radical pro-abortionist Joann Davisdon for a top RNC job.)
Let's tell the RNC we won't send contributions unless Specter shapes up. GWB had better apply the screws to Specter at once. Email the RNC here:
FINANCE@GOP.COM
He did not have the votes the last session.
With the 55 vote repub lead, he claimed to be able to get the required 51.
The rino's that I remember who are potentially in opposition are: McCain, Snowe; Specter; Chaffee; and up to 2 more...
OK, what's 55 minus 6?
I know what it is, but I also know that Frist says he has his 51 votes. The question is which of the 6 strays does he have rounded up?
Every time Specter does something like this, he delays the appointment process by another week and increases my anger.
I'm not angry at Specter, because that would be futile. He is what he is, and what he is is well known.
I'm angry and Bush and Rove for putting Specter where he is, in a key position to interfere with the most important business of Bush's second term in office. This is what we elected Bush for--to appoint conservative judges and stop the radical activist subversion of our country. If he doesn't do it, the fault will be his. The fallout will begin to appear in the 2006 elections.
This will also put an end to any hopes Frist may have to run for the presidency. I don't know whether I would support Frist in any case, but I certainly won't if Specter succeeds in delaying the nomination process much longer.
These candidates are only the first. We have a bunch of other candidates to appoint before Bush's second term runs out. We must hit the ground running and start the process NOW. We have already lost a couple of months unnecessarily due to Specter's delaying tactics. Bush is responsible.
There is a reason for everything. Bush's strategery has been good so far. This is a poker match. Right now, the RNC is letting the DNC to take the ball and run with it.
That probably means that Specter is not one of the rinos that Frist has in his pocket.
Unless he has something to hang over Specter's head...
I am SOOOOOOOOOO glad I didn't vote for Specter, what a RINO
We need to FReep the RINO Specter mercilessly...MUD
Specter better shape up.......or he'll be shipped out.
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