Posted on 05/25/2005 11:06:04 AM PDT by South40
Democrats say they feel bullied by Republican rule
WASHINGTON – California's two senators may have voiced delight about the Monday compromise that averted a showdown on the filibuster, but the GOP's threat to abolish one of the most potent political weapons available to Democrats clearly left sore feelings toward Republicans and the White House.
"Today, there is not really active consultation by this administration in most cases," Sen. Dianne Feinstein told her colleagues this week. "Instead, there appears to be a kind of disregard for the opinions of all Democratic senators."
Sen. Barbara Boxer had similar sentiments, telling her colleagues that Republicans and President Bush have demonstrated "an arrogance of power." Republicans, she said in a Senate speech last week, "did not get enough of what they want . . . and they are throwing a fit."
A partisan fight over the confirmations of federal appellate court nominees Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown evolved in recent weeks into an arguably more important battle over whether to preserve the filibuster, a Senate tradition allowing a minority of lawmakers to stage unlimited debate that blocks a vote on something, or someone, they oppose.
Feinstein and Boxer, both part of the Senate's Democratic minority, argued that doing away with the filibuster would create such ill feelings that the chamber would become a rancorous place ruled by passions rather than reason.
"The Senate will most certainly face a loss of civility, a loss of respect for differences," Feinstein said in a Senate speech Monday. "Political messages will overwhelm substantive policy, and political potshots will drive our debates, rather than the best interest of the American people."
Meanwhile, Boxer sought to portray the president as something of a spoiled autocrat by noting the Senate had approved 208 of his judicial nominees and rejected 10.
"This is a 95 percent success rate," Boxer said. "I ask the people of this country to think about what it would mean in their lives if they got 95 percent of what they wanted."
On Monday, Senate leaders struck a compromise: Democrats agreed to stand aside and allow swift votes on three circuit court nominees, including Owen and Brown, and to withhold filibusters on future circuit court and Supreme Court nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances." In return, the GOP agreed it would not change Senate rules to prevent filibusters on judicial nominees.
Feinstein and Boxer have argued that Owen and Brown are too conservative for lifetime appointments to the federal bench. While each called Monday's compromise "a victory" for Senate tradition, their remarks in the past days revealed long-simmering sentiments about how the GOP has operated in Congress and the White House over the years.
"Checks and balances are not new," Feinstein told her colleagues. "Our country's 200-year tradition of working through our differences is not new. The need for consultation is not new. . . . What is new is the majority party's decision that if you win an election, you should have absolute power."
Some Republicans have suggested that Feinstein and Boxer acted hypocritically, because in the past, each called on Republicans to stop delaying tactics that prevented the Senate from voting on some of former President Clinton's judicial nominees.
On Sept. 16, 1999, Feinstein said "a nominee is entitled to a vote. Vote them up; vote them down," she said when conservatives tried to block votes on two nominees to California's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "If we don't like them, we can vote against them. That is the honest thing to do. If there are things in their background, in their abilities that don't pass muster, vote no."
On Jan. 28, 1998, the day the Senate confirmed Barry Silverman to the 9th Circuit, Boxer said that whether "the delays are on the Republican side or the Democratic side, let these names come up, let us have debate, let us vote."
Feinstein acknowledged that six years ago, when Senate Republicans tried to block the Clinton judicial nominees, "many of us . . . were frustrated."
"At that time, I urged my colleagues to allow a vote," Feinstein said in her speech Monday. "However, I did not advocate breaking the (Senate) rules . . . as a way to force Republicans to their knees."
Civility? Was Ted Kennedy's outrageous behavior considered civil? The problem is that in the past, Republicans have always been too meek. Now that they have finally shown a little bit of spine the RATS thinks they're being uncivil. Good grief, if any Republican went into a tirade spewing venom about Boxer, Feinstein or Reid, like Kennedy does, they would go into coronary arrest. This is the reason that the RATS hate Tom DeLay. They can't push him around. He would tell them to shove it, in a gentlemanly way, of course. LOL
DeLay/Tancredo 2008!!!!
Let me repeat for Sen. Feinstein something I heard alot following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996:
We won. You Lost.
Get over it.
See how thaty works/feels, Babs?
May I be the first to tell these two b!tches to "put some ice on that"
(Oops, I thought I was on the WoW boards for a second there.)
Breaking Senate rules?
Who in the Senate has ever advocated breaking the rules of the Senate??!!
There was some talk of changing the rules of the Senate to bring the Senate's procedures more in line with U.S. Constitution.
I'm sure it did.
I wish these two clowns would leave ala Thelma and Louise. Of course I said that about those other two clowns - Donna Shelaila and Hazel O'Leary also. Oh well......
Boxer's responsible for a good deal of erosion of civility in the Senate.
Feinstein and Boxer are part of the cause of the erosion.
Suppose it was Kennedy calling a female, minority nominee for the federal bench that was voted for by 87% of the residents of one of the most liberal states in the US a "neanderthal" that tipped off these two sleuths?
I agree! She is one of the most uncivil persons in the Senate. She reminds me of an evil bug that needs swatting or stomping.
It's ironic that Boxer and Feinstein are the SOURCE OF THE EROSION OF CIVILITY.
You are in the minority! Now say it a hundred times and let it sink in.
As a Californian, I find those two to be an utter and complete embarrassment.
"This is a 95 percent success rate," Boxer said. "I ask the people of this country to think about what it would mean in their lives if they got 95 percent of what they wanted."
We'd all be a damn sight happier?
Especially if we didn't have to fight 40% of the population
that was trying to keep us from having any thing our way.
"Instead, there appears to be a kind of disregard for the opinions of all Democratic senators."
I don't disregard them. But you don't want to know
WHAT I regard them. (My mom would've washed out my
mouth with soap.)
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...
Fire burn and cauldron bubble...
Judging by the election returns last time, I would be living in Idaho!
Exactly! Whenever I hear those ladies mentioned (or Hillary for that matter) that rhyme comes to mind!
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