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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The Deal
Quite a few Blogospheric voices have already rung in on the "avert the nuclear option" compromise announced yesterday evening, regarding President Bush's seven filibustered nominees to federal Courts of Appeals. No one seems to be happy about it. Truth be told, your Curmudgeon isn't happy, either.
The deal itself, if ratified by the larger body of GOP senators, is a capitulation that surrenders at least two and possibly four worthy nominees to the Democrats' mercies, while binding the Democrats to absolutely nothing. It puts the GOP contingent in a position from which, should the Democrats subsequently demonstrate bad faith and the Republicans reintroduce the possibility of limiting the filibuster to legislative matters, the Democrats will be able to play tu quoque games from a position of moral superiority. After all, they can merely say that in their estimation, the "extreme circumstances" specifically exempted by the deal had come to pass.
John McCain has demonstrated once more that he's no fit standard-bearer for the Republican Party. He's probably given up his hope of a presidential nomination. His ongoing attempts to commandeer the attention of the media by pandering to the Democrats manifest his insatiable need for attention, even though he has nothing substantive to offer anyone, and much to atone for.
Bill Frist has demonstrated that he's either insufficiently in tune with the conservative agenda, or he's unable to impose party discipline on his fractious brethren. If Dr. Frist really was harboring hopes of a presidential nod, he can forget them. Dubya won't forget this.
The Democrats are being Democrats. That is, they're simultaneously claiming victory while moaning about having surrendered anything at all, however insubstantial. Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, ranted immediately afterward about having put the GOP on notice about its "radical right wing." Some comments have been passed at Daily Kos and Eschaton to the effect that the awful Republican fascism machine can now roll over us unopposed. What's wrong with this picture?
But of course, the main event still looms in our future: the need to replace between two and four Supreme Court Justices over the next three years. Anyone who thinks the Democrats will permit a Republican president and his Senate backers to select those justices without the bloodiest and most vicious struggle in the history of parliamentary politics simply hasn't been paying attention. Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were warm-up frames for what the Left will do at the next Supreme Court nomination.
After all, Roe v. Wade is at stake!
Comments
I’m going to recommend being more sanguine about this than most. I wrote about this on-going confrontation last Friday. Last night’s deal looks like a stalling action by both sides. Change is coming and forces on top fear change.
The compromise pleases the center but none of the activists. Hence the 12-14 “centrists” assigned the job of hammering out the deal.
We who fight for principles wanted this fight over already, but it’s clear that wasn’t going to happen just because it seemed like there was no other choice.
Arlen Specter wasn’t in the room—but his spectre was.
Recall that Specter, an incumbent, came within a hair of being upset in his own primary by Pat Toomey. Old guard GOP claimed they had to back the incumbent even though liberal, and convinced Bush and even Santorum (despite Rightist’s Santorum’s win in the same state) that a bird in the hand (incumbents’ reelect at 95% rate) was worth two in the Bush (a Toomey win even at a maybe 55% was too uncertain for the timid Right and too sure for the Leftist Pubbies). So both campaigned for Specter.
Partisans like myself didn’t like a Specter backing because it was tinged with both a short-term gain outlook and the mark of cowardice—leaving us to endure many little ignominious deaths down the road.
This confrontation is but one of those consequences.
With Toomey in the Senate I think there would now be 51 votes assured. Specter is the swing and so we’re paying for his presence yet again.
It’s the GOP’s backing of the Specter/Chaffee/Snow/Collins/McCain/Hegel chickens coming home to roost. It is they who make this compromise necessary because it wasn’t clear they’d go along with the vote limiting the filibuster. That’s even after Snow and Collins lost large military bases. (Why before the vote and not after leaves me bewildered.)
So people like myself will continue to write back to the NRSC that not sending them money is the only assurance we have that we’re not funding one of these RepublicRats—like Specter.
Isn’t it clear that it is not this deal that’s the problem? Is not this deal a consequence of earlier weakkneed GOP political machinations? Doesn’t it look like what statist forces wanted all along? So certainly building originalist courage and combatting political infighting is the problem. That takes time and planning to conquer.
I think this deal may be seen as actually making progress against the statists. They hold all the cards yet still passed 3 judges who appear to be “originalists.”
Fran: Do you think what will come to bother most of us is that this battle is over and it was anticlimatic? That it had all the earmarks of building to a decisive victory but our guys flinched from the strain of hearing all the Armageddon talk?
Posted by Pascal on 05/24/2005 at 11:29 AMThe deterministion of extreme circumstances is not left not to the person casting the vote, the determinitation is expressly reserved to each individual Senator.
Democrats “A-J” casts vote against closure on Supreme Court candidate “one”.
Filibuster (no closure). Full Senate debates and then votes on whether it is “extreme circumstances”.
That is a 50% vote.
Democrats claim this case is “extreme circumstances”. Republicans claim, not
Vote - procedure, same as todat.
Would have been better if Pac got the whole thing out of the way before Scotus vacancy but a dry run does provide some education
Posted by Doug_S on 05/25/2005 at 12:37 AM
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