Posted on 05/05/2005 12:27:05 PM PDT by quidnunc
Lost within media coverage of the game of chicken being played by Democrats and Republicans over the Democrats' use of the filibuster are several important points.
• The confrontation doesn't constitute a constitutional crisis, as some alarmist commentators have suggested, because the filibuster isn't and never has been a constitutional provision.
To the contrary, the idea of cloture is merely a Senate rule dating back to 1917, when a two-thirds requirement was introduced to end otherwise endless Senate debates. The rule was revised in 1975 to require only 60 votes under the sponsorship of Robert Byrd, the man currently comparing the Republicans to Nazis for suggesting further revisions. The Republican proposal to reduce the requirement for cloture to a simple majority has been referred to as the "nuclear option"; in reality, it's not even a 105 mm howitzer.
• Unlike Republican proposals to revise the cloture rule, the Democratic resort to the filibuster to block Bush administration judicial nominees is historically unprecedented.
The filibuster has been used for a range of often nefarious purposes over time, perhaps most spectacularly during the 1950s and '60s as a means for segregationist Southern Democrats to block civil rights legislation. But it has never been used to prevent an up-ordown vote on appellate court nominees who have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
What the Democrats are doing in the Senate is, therefore, a departure from the same Senate "tradition" they claim Republicans are recklessly jeopardizing. Nor is there any parallel between Republican efforts to block Bill Clinton's judicial nominees and Democratic efforts to block George W. Bush's nominees because the Republicans never resorted to filibusters to deny votes on nominees by the full Senate.
The Democrats' charge that Republican threats to alter rules on cloture represent a disruption of Senate harmony conveniently overlooks their own leadership's provocative prior decision to use parliamentary gimmicks to undermine the Senate's constitutional duty to "advise and consent" to judicial nominations and is akin to blaming America's declaration of war on Japan after Pearl Harbor for disturbing the tranquility of the Pacific.
• Democratic obstructionism has nothing to do with the merits of the Bush appellate court nominees in question, but everything to do with broader questions of judicial philosophy.
Democrats claim, in yet another inversion of logic, that they are protecting the Constitution by blocking "extremist" judges, but what they are really seeking to protect is the liberal ability to creatively reinterpret that same Constitution to ratify liberal political goals. For Democrats, the word "extremist" applies only to judges who feel bound by the Constitution and the intentions of those who crafted it, never to those who treat it as a Rorschach blot when issuing their rulings (so long as those rulings lean leftward on the vital social and cultural issues of the day).
Strict constructionists of the kind being nominated by Bush are unwelcome to liberals not only because they interpret the Constitution in a manner unlikely to approve liberal goals, but also because such an approach returns many issues from the courts to democratically elected legislatures.
And therein lies the rub, as liberal reliance upon the federal courts has grown over time only because liberals have been unable to get what they want on such issues through such democratically elected bodies.
Judicial activism tends to be the desperate tactic of those who lose up-or-down votes of the people's representatives — just as the filibuster is now being used by Democrats to prevent Senate votes on Bush's nominees.
Having held the presidency for only eight of the past 24 years and unlikely to regain either chamber of Congress for many years to come, Democrats want to prevent the federal judiciary from being foreclosed as a route to liberal achievements. What matters for Senate Democrats is not just blocking a handful of Bush lower-court nominees; rather, the goal is to make an example of those nominees to dissuade Republicans from seriously attempting to retake the last remaining citadel of unvarnished liberalism.
Those of us who believe in limited government tend to find the filibuster appealing because it provides an additional layer of security for minority rights against ephemeral, often dangerous majority sentiments.
But who wouldn't laugh at those whose means of protecting the Constitution are to block judges who would take it more seriously?
...as liberal reliance upon the federal courts has grown over time only because liberals have been unable to get what they want on such issues through such democratically elected bodies...
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Here is exactly the Clinton strategy, and for the most part, it worked. This is WHY the criminal left so badly wants to CONTROL the key elements of our judicial system. (ergo blocking of Constitution-supporting judges)
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM is the trump card of the corrupt left.
It's not just the Clinton strategy. It's been a primary leftist strategy from at least the mid-20th century on.
The very first time the Dems blocked his nominees is when the GOP should have stood up and said "Wait a minute! We don't FILIBUSTER judges!", and that would have ended it right there.
But what did they do instead?
They let the Dems run the Senate like they were in charge, instead of the Reps.
I'm sorry to say, that much of the blame, over the the filibuster, rests right on the shoulders of the Republicans in the Senate that should have spoken up the first time it happened.
I agree. I'm getting old waiting for the Republicans to stand up and act like men.
Too bad none of the Freepers in this forum is in Congress--this problem would be fixed today!
" Too bad none of the Freepers in this forum is in Congress--this problem would be fixed today!"
Hmmm...
Congressman Billybob comes to mind.
Matter of fact, he's on this thread right now.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1397410/posts
Post #11
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