Posted on 05/02/2005 12:57:14 PM PDT by ajolympian2004
There's ample cause to criticize Sen. Ken Salazar for reneging on a key campaign promise. But the picketing of his wife's Dairy Queen restaurant by members of the Faith Bible Chapel who carried signs reading, "Salazar is anti-Christian" and "Salazar mocks God" is absurd. This dispute isn't about Salazar's religion; it's about his politics.
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Correction
Because of an editing error, this column misidentified those picketing a local restaurant as being associated with Faith Bible Chapel. The picketers were from Denver Bible Church.
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On the other hand, Salazar's angry diatribe against Focus on the Family's advertising campaign targeting him and other filibustering Democrats was equally overblown. Salazar melodramatically claimed that "there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country." Listen, nobody has hijacked the U.S. Senate nor is Ken Salazar some kind of an anti-Christian heathen.
I've heard the Focus on the Family radio ads admonishing Salazar for his flip-flop on the filibustering of President Bush's appellate court nominees. The ads say nothing about his religious beliefs. They accurately relate his current position as compared to his campaign promise and they urge constituents to call him and express their disapproval. I've also read Salazar's standard e-mail response to his constituents. It's unresponsive, platitudinous, political doubletalk.
During the campaign, Salazar flatly stated that he favored an up-or-down vote for Bush's judicial nominees in the U.S. Senate. Now, he's rationalizing a continuation of the obstructionist filibuster, not to prolong debate but to require a supermajority for confirmation.
Absolutely nothing has changed in the principles surrounding this issue. What has changed is Salazar's election. In order to beat Pete Coors, Salazar correctly judged that he'd have to run as a moderate. With no legislative voting record, he was free to position himself wherever he chose. The filibustering of judges was a litmus test issue during the campaign. Salazar didn't want to be perceived as a Tom Daschle liberal on this (and we know what happened to Daschle). And he might even have believed, then, that he would honor his promise on judges. When he got to Washington, however, he soon got the crash course on hardball, party politics.
I don't believe Ken Salazar is a left-wing Pat Schroeder, Diana DeGette or Ted Kennedy Democrat. He has some wiggle room and might actually vote with conservative Republicans on some issues. He can probably survive as a maverick - up to a point. But he's still a Democrat, and a freshman Democrat, at that. He doesn't want to get crosswise, right out of the box, with his party's leadership. And the Democrat filibustering of conservative nominees to the Circuit Courts of Appeal is a non-negotiable matter. So Salazar went along. This was wholly predictable. As I have often explained to electoral naifs and idealistic independents: in the American political system, party trumps person.
It's true that more than 200 of Bush's judicial nominees have been confirmed. But that was mostly to the lower courts. Senate Democrats have concentrated their resistance on Circuit Court of Appeals nominees, mini-Supreme Courts, as they are called. That's where the major league action is. The confirmation rate of Bush's appellate judges is only 65 percent, the lowest of any modern president.
Ten of Bush's nominees have been filibustered, some for as long as four years. This is what's unprecedented. Never before has there been a successful filibuster in the Senate to deny an up-or-down vote to nominees with clear majority support. The Constitution prescribes a simple majority to confirm judges, not a supermajority.
Democrats cannot justify this act by tradition. In fact, before Senate Rule 22 was broadened in 1949, it wasn't even theoretically possible to filibuster a judicial nomination. For the record, Senate GOP leaders who have raised the specter of the so-called constitutional option (or the "nuclear option," as Democrats and the liberal media prefer to label it) to prohibit filibusters on judicial nominees have never proposed restricting filibusters on normal legislative matters.
Bush's appellate court nominees aren't "radical, ultra- right-wing reactionaries," as Senate Democrats and leftist pundits have labeled them. They're simply conservatives, and liberals don't like that. They've been judged "well-qualified" by the American Bar Association. These nominees are no further right of center than Supreme Court Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter are left of center.
It was understood during the last presidential election that the winner would shape the federal judiciary, as has always been the case. If Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008, she'll do the same thing. It's as American as apple pie. Senate Democrats are flatly wrong on this and Salazar has fallen in with bad and unprincipled company.
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA.
How stupid do you Coloradons have to be to have believed this man? You had your chance to elect Pete Coors and all you got was another lying RAT.
On second thought I take it back. We here in the Nutmeg state have given everyone the likes of Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman...apologies offered to my friends in Colo.
Don't you sometimes feel sorry for the good people of Wales?
Pete Coors made the point about judges over and over in the senate campaign. Unfortunately he wasn't out in the state among Coloradoans enough saying this along what he could have talked about regarding other campaign topics. Pete counted on radio and TV way too much.
FMCDH(BITS)
Accepted.
I'm originally from CT. Left for good after Lowell Wanker sold out on the campaign promise of no state income tax. Never looked back.
FMCDH(BITS)
FMCDH(BITS)
Oh so it's more important not to be crosswise with Harry Reid than do the right thing for one's country.
I'll second that. NJ is the pits.
I think we trump just about everyone. In WA we offer the "winners" of Cantwell, Murray, McDermott, Inslee and "The Troll" Gregriore. McDermott alone is enough for ANYONE.
Unfortunately, NJ bent over for McGreevy as well but I didn't list him because he is the Governor and not in the "jump in front of any camera" U.S. Senate ...
This fellow has been a big disappointment. His brother John who is a house member representing western Colorado is actually a much more centrist democrat with good conservative values.
Salazar is just another example of a lowlife DemocRAT saying anything it takes to get elected, to get power.
I have just two words for this guy: John McCain!
That's not as bad as my native state, NY. They thrust upon us a schmuck and a shrew.
Well...we also elected Patsy Schroeder:-)
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