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May 21, 2005
Fili-Busted
One of my biggest problems with the Republican Party's attempts to ban filibusters -- beyond the fact that it subverts democracy itself, removes a 200+ year old part of the checks and balances system, and is a sinister attempt to bring us closer to one party rule -- is the complete and utter hypocrisy of their position, given how they used the same procedure to block President Clinton's judicial nominees. (Then again, does anyone really expect consistency or integrity from a conservative anymore anyway?)
The funniest and best example of these scoundrels being tripped up by their own histories came this week, when New York Senator Charles Schumer asked Senator Frist a simple, yet devastating question:
"Isn't it correct," Schumer asked Frist, "that on March 8, 2000, my friend from Tennessee voted to uphold the filibuster of a judge, Richard Paez?"
Frist's answer was classic comedy. The correct answer is yes -- Frist was one of a handful of Republican senators to vote against cloture on Paez' nomination -- but that's not what Frist said Wednesday morning. Instead, he launched into a rambling response that began with a stammering stutter-step -- "Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we'll come back and discuss it further..."
I half expected him to finish the conversation with a "eh-Th-Th-Th-The-Th-That's All, Folks!"
It got even funnier when his press secretary tried to make actual logic out of Frist's hypocrisy. (Thanks to Mileah for the link here.) You really have to read the whole transcript to get a sense of just how Orwellian the doublespeak really is, but this little exchange sums it up nicely:
Reporter: So what was Sen. Frist hoping to accomplish when he voted against cloture on the Paez nomination?
Hapless Flack: He was making his voice heard on that cloture.
Reporter: And how is that different from what Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats are doing now? Aren't they just making their voices heard?
Hapless Flack: Because it -- they are denying up-or-down votes to the rest of the Senate on these nominees who have majority support. So they are killing these nominees through the filibuster.
Rep: Which is exactly what Sen. Frist was trying to do in 2000.
HF: But A) not as part of leadership. And B), had it gotten to the point that the cloture vote didn't go through, we could have a conversation about hypotheticals. It was clear that Paez was going through. It was clear that Paez had the 60 votes for cloture. So it doesn't necessarily matter that Bill Frist -- I mean, if it came to a point where he didn't have 60 votes for cloture, and then Bill Frist was part of that, then you would have had successful cloture, and you could have said that Bill Frist [would have] realized that [his vote] was going to stop this cloture vote, and [he would have] stopped it.
Rep: So attempts at filibusters are OK so long as they're futile?
HF: Sort of, yeah.
Sounds like somebody needs to go back to civics class.
Meanwhile, polls show overwhelming support for democracy among the American people -- and against the Republican leadership's position on the issue of filibusters.
But by a 2 to 1 ratio, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush's nominees. Even many Republicans were reluctant to abandon current Senate confirmation procedures: Nearly half opposed any rule changes, joining eight in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 political independents, the poll found.
And if you had any doubt of what the Republican leadership is really all about, Senator Rick Santorum proved it once and for all this week. Disagree with Santorum and the Republicans? You must be a Nazi.
[Democrats' position on the filibuster is] "the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster."
After looking at that poll, it looks to me that Santorum just compared 2/3 of the American public to Adolf Hitler.
(Now, in fair disclosure... yes, in angry frustration after the election last November, I did put up an angry post, and in the comment section I came very close to calling Bush and his supporters Nazis. It was a mistake committed out of anger. Of course, I'm not a United States Senator; I'm just a blogger. I said it in a little corner of blogtopia, not on the floor of the US Senate. And when challenged on it by conservative readers, I retracted the comparison -- something Santorum has not done and will not do.)
Ironic that the greatest assault on democracy this century has not come from without, but rather from the floor of the Senate; not from an external enemy, but from the leadership of the majority party.
