REPUGS HATE FILIBUSTERS! The Proof Is Right Here!
Kyle Schwitters
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
IN THEIR QUEST TO THWART PRESIDENT OBAMA, Republicans do not fear the
hobgoblin of consistency.
For much of this decade, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, now the top
Republican on the Judiciary Committee, led the fight against
Democratic filibusters of George W. Bush's judicial nominees. He
decried Democrats' "unprecedented, obstructive tactics." To have Bush
nominees "opposed on a partisan filibuster, it is really wrong," he
added. He demanded they get "an up-and-down vote." He praised
Republican leaders because they "opposed judicial filibusters" and
have "been consistent on this issue even when it was not to their
political benefit to do so."
So now a Democratic president is in the White House and he has
nominated his first appellate judicial nominee, U.S. District Judge
David Hamilton. And what did Sessions do? He went to the floor and led
a filibuster.
"I opposed filibusters before," the Alabaman said with his trademark
twang. But in this case, he went on, "I don't agree with his judicial
philosophy. Therefore, I believe this side cannot acquiesce into a
philosophy that says that Democratic presidents can get their judges
confirmed with 50 votes."
Uh-huh.
Ten of the Senate's 40 Republicans, attempting some measure of
consistency, parted ways with Sessions and voted with Democrats in a
resounding 70 to 29 vote to break the filibuster. But the rest
abandoned their deeply held views of just a few years ago.
There was, for example, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Back in
2005, he demanded "a simple up-or-down vote" for nominees and urged
the Democrats to "move away from advise and obstruct and get back to
advise and consent." He declared that Democrats wanted to "take away
the power to nominate from the president and grant it to a minority of
41 senators."
On Tuesday, McConnell voted to sustain the filibuster.
There was also Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), who in 2005 gave his
considered opinion that "neither filibusters nor supermajority
requirements have any place in the confirmation process."
On Tuesday, Brownback voted in favor of filibusters.
And there was Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), who warned four years ago
that "if the filibuster becomes an institutional response where 40
senators driven by special interest groups declare war on nominees in
the future, the consequence will be that the judiciary will be
destroyed over time."
On Tuesday, Graham voted to institutionalize the filibuster.
When you're in politics, a certain amount of hypocrisy comes with the
job. Still, what happened on the Senate floor Tuesday stretched even
the senatorial capacity to suspend shame to new levels of elasticity.
Republican senators had been under intense pressure from conservative
interest groups. The American Conservative Union asked its supporters
to respond to this "critical test." The Conservative Action Project
urged a filibuster, and the radicalized Republican National Committee
issued a document proclaiming that "HAMILTON PROTECTED SEX OFFENDERS
ON THE INTERNET."
GOP lawmakers evidently felt queasy about this reversal, because not a
one of them joined Sessions on the floor as he pressed for the
filibuster. Sessions argued that Hamilton "has previously worked for
or been associated with ACORN, which is certainly not a mainstream
organization but a real left-wing group for sure." (Hamilton spent a
month working as a canvasser for the group when he finished college 30
years ago.) Further, Sessions accused, "Mr. Hamilton was a board
member and vice president of the ACLU chapter of Indiana." (That was
20 years ago.)
The allegations tumbled from Sessions's lips, even the outrage that
Hamilton "permitted the use of Allah by a Muslim imam" in a public
prayer. Sessions said Hamilton fit the category of "extraordinary
circumstances" in which a filibuster should be allowed under an
agreement four years ago by a bipartisan group of 14 Senate moderates.
Sessions neglected to mention that he opposed that agreement at the
time.
Democrats had some consistency problems of their own on Tuesday, as
they found themselves demanding the "up-or-down vote" that they tried
to deny Republicans during the Bush years. But Democrats were not in
the same league of hypocrisy, because they weren't opposing
Republicans' right to filibuster. They merely had enough votes to
override this particular filibuster.
That was in part because of the lavish praise for the nominee by his
home-state senator, Richard Lugar, the chamber's most senior
Republican. Then there was the matter of Republicans' past
denunciations of filibusters, which Democrats had well archived.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), for example, vowed in 2005 that he
"would never filibuster any president's judicial nominee, period." He
maintained his credibility with a vote against the filibuster. So did
Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah).
Sessions, however, was unencumbered by such foolish consistency.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reminded Sessions on the
Senate floor that the Alabaman had previously branded the judicial
filibuster "obstructionism" and "very painful," and a "very, very grim
thing."
"I agree," Reid said. But Sessions no longer did.
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