 AP Photo |
Posted on 04/16/2005 2:53:41 PM PDT by Jean S
Edited on 04/16/2005 2:54:27 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON - A looming power play by Senate Republican leaders to clamp down on filibusters against judicial nominees is a high-risk strategy. It could change the balance of power in the Senate, erode the rights of the minority party and backfire against Republicans in the long term.
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The Senate is "not always going to be Republican," former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the 1996 GOP presidential candidate, is reminding fellow Republicans. "Think down the road," he advises.
Dole is one of several former Senate majority leaders who have counseled a go-slow approach on the brink of a parliamentary war over Democratic filibusters — delaying tactics — against President Bush's judicial nominees.
The current majority leader, Sen. Bill Frist (news, bio, voting record), R-Tenn., and some other leading Republicans argue that the Constitution's "advice and consent" clause is under assault. Requiring any threshold greater than a majority vote in the 100-member Senate for confirmation is unconstitutional, they say.
It now takes 60 votes to shut down a filibuster. That is fine for legislation, but inappropriate for judicial nominations, Frist and his colleagues argue.
Frist soon may seek to declare that a judicial nominee needs only a 51-vote majority and cannot be subject to the 60-vote margin needed to stop a filibuster.
Some are calling this approach the "nuclear option," one sure to cause Democrats to retaliate and sour any semblance of a working relationship between the parties.
A likely 2008 presidential contender, Frist is under pressure to force a Senate showdown in the coming weeks. But not every Senate Republican is with him on the issue.
"Someday there will be a liberal Democrat president and a liberal Democrat Congress," Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., told MSNBC last week. "Do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved by the Senate of the United States with 51 votes if Democrats are in the majority?"
Upping the ante is Frist's planned taped message with Christian conservatives who portray Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking Bush's nominees.
Further raising the temperature: Republicans who have criticized the federal judiciary over the Terri Schiavo feeding-tube case.
Democrats have promise to retaliate with maneuvers that could tie the Senate in knots. The Democrats' leader, Sen. Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) of Nevada, said a campaign by "radical Republicans" would overturn a 200-year tradition in the Senate and "stop the ability of senators from talking, from filibustering."
The skirmish is a precursor to an expected battle over a Supreme Court nominee.
Both parties have used filibusters over the years and both parties have been accused of violating the rules.
It has been a long time since filibusters were conducted by senators who spoke hour after hour in the full Senate. One masterful practitioner was the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.
Now, for the most part, filibusters are merely threatened. Still, that usually is enough to trigger the filing of a motion, which requires 60 votes, to sharply limit debate. In practical, terms, little can get through the Senate without at least 60 votes.
Barring filibusters for judicial nominations "would be a serious blow to minority rights in the Senate. There has always been some form of extended debate, although from 1917 on there have been ways of closing it off," said Allan J. Lichtman, a political historian at American University.
In 1917, the Senate adopted a rule to cut off filibusters with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. The 67 vote requirement was reduced to the current 60 votes in 1975.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., now sharply denounces Republican tactics to limit filibusters, even likening the tactics to those used by Adolf Hitler in his rise to power.
But when he was majority leader in 1977, Byrd joined forces with then-Vice President Walter Mondale in crushing a filibuster by two members of his own party — Sens. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, and James Abourezk, D-S.D. — on a proposal to deregulate natural gas prices.
With Mondale presiding, Byrd manipulated Senate rules to force hundreds of pending amendments — filed as a delaying tactic — to be ruled out of order. Byrd later won adoption of a rule change barring such "filibusters by amendment."
The White House insists publicly that it is keeping its distance from how the Senate conducts its business.
But Bush told newspaper editors last week: "I think my judges ought to get an up or down vote, period." And Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as president of the Senate, has committed to break the tie in favor of ending judicial filibusters should a 50-50 vote occur.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered national and international news for The Associated Press since 1973.
This is a wire story???
And they would be right.
These people don't realize that it's not about who might be in charge at any given time, it's about what's constitutional.
We need to take the dems on every step of the way.
He gave up his seat to APPEASE the Democrats. It is his way.
It's a commentary disguised as an AP wire story.
It would be if Republicans could grow testicles and do the will of the people that put them in office!
With the Rinos it is virtually impossible to get a filibuster free majority. You would need 67 or 68 Senate seats. It has almost never happened to either party which makes filibustering judicial nominees a joke. 90% of the judgeships would be vacant.
And then again it could succeed.
ha ha ha ---
dream on
'pubbies will never have to worry about libs having power again.
they may have to be concern about conservatives, but that is long way away...
AP is run by terrorists and insurgents.
Only AP would quote a Democratic party Klu Klux Klansman about Hitler.
Dole is right, some day there WILL be a democrat majority
and none of our pleading," Bbbbbbut we didn't invoke a rule
change!" is going to stop them from exercising THEIR power.
WE MUST DO WHAT NEEDS BE DONE!
Because we would never have stopped nationalized health care without the fillibuster. ..
The changes they propose are more than reasonable, IMO
We have that under the present system. The RINO's won't fight left-wing ideologues as judges when there's a rat president. So I don't see how it hurts us.
I'd rather make the obstructionist party actually conduct a real-live, no-sleep filibuster than let them get away with blocking nominations with the mere threat of a filibuster.
McCain, Dole, and Allan Lichtman are stooges. The GOP gives up nothing by changing the rules, because it has not used the filibuster on judicial nominees in the past and would not be expected to in the future.
The fact is, this a minor rule change which means almost nothing in the greater scheme of Congressional and Senatorial procedural distortions. The whole filibuster concept is a corruption of the legislative process. They should just do it and get it done and get on with making hay out of the 'rats response.
I'm starting to think the whole Senate are just a bunch of puffed up self-important toad princes.
Oh yes--and whoever christened this tempest-in-a-teapot the "nuclear option" ought to be taken out and horse-whipped.
So what's to lose if you are going give them the up/down vote on your part and have the up/down vote rejected by the democrats when they chose?
It's 2017 and the Dems have managed a 51-49 majority in the Senate and elected Chelsea Clinton President. Chelsea nominates Noam Chomsky to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court following the unexpected and unexplained death of Anthony Scalia.
The Pubbies filibuster the nomination citing the example of the Dems doing the same thing for nearly 16 years during the Bush and Rice Administrations.
Teddy Kennedy takes the floor of the Senate and demands that the filibuster end "for the good of the country". He goes on to explain that the circumstances are completely different then they were during the Bush and Rice Administrations and that it is unconstitutional to filibuster a judicial nomination. States Kennedy: "What is it about the words 'advise and consent' that the Republicans don't understand. They are clearly violating the important Senate judicial oversight provisions of the Constitution with this illegal filibuster.
The Dems listen and act to change the confirmation rules. Filibustering a judicial nomination is no longer allowed.
Noam Chomsky becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Tell me this won't happen if the Pubbies just be good soldiers and do what Teddy Kennedy and John McCain are telling them to do.
Give me a break.
Remember the Golden Rule: do unto others...but do it FIRST!
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