A Majority Ruled By The Minority
By Vincent Fiore (05/27/05)
I don’t know who originally coined the phrase, “can’t we all just get along,” (though many believe it was Los Angeles police victim Rodney King) but I think it’s a good bet that he or she was a Republican Senator.
The news on Monday night, May 23, on the eve of the “nuclear option” that was to be voted on the following day, was averted by the limp-wristed and heightened-sensibilities wing of the Republican Party. Assisting the flaccid wing of the GOP in this, the latest installment of “How not to lead when you are the majority party in power,” was the six so-called “bipartisan center” of the Democratic Party.
Approximately seven GOP moderates, or “mavericks,” as the media like to call them, huddled with their Democratic “centrist” counterparts in the Senate in closed-door meetings for several days. The meetings pertain to the fate of seven Appeals Court nominees that have been languishing in limbo for as long as four years.
What came out of those meetings is this: Republicans can hope that Democrats do not “filibuster any of Bush's future appeals court or Supreme Court nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances.”
John McCain and his merry band of maverick’s think that this agreement would “clear the way for yes-or-no votes on some of Bush's nominees, but make no guarantee.”
“For their part, Republicans agreed not to support an attempt to strip Democrats of their right to block votes.”
(news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050523/ap_on_go_co/filibuster_fight_139)
It seems to me, that Democrats got nearly everything they went shopping for, while the majority of Senate Republicans were once again forced to except the pious and media-glorified mush of the Republican middle.
For the GOP--the party in the majority on Capitol Hill--it is a spectacle of craven politics, coupled with an equally stunning display of disdain for the voters that elected them. One cannot help but believe that the voters went to the polls with the intent of not just electing an individual, but strengthening the party as a whole.
For the Democratic Party--the party in the minority on Capitol Hill--it is a systematic and years-long choreographed show of obstructionism. With Republicans threatening to stop this now-institutionalized obstructionism via the “nuclear option,” Democrats have in turn threatened to shut down Senate business. (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7193614/)
Alone, or in the minority, senators cannot “call the tune” in the Senate chamber. For four years, Republican constituents listened as GOP senators lamented the difficulty in getting anything done in such a “closely divided Senate.” So voters responded by giving the GOP four new seats in the Senate in the last election, along with a clear message to enact conservative change. This would include getting the president’s Circuit Court nominees to the floor for a vote.
The recent Democratic banter about “blowing up the Senate” or “changing the rules” holds little in the way of truth. The Senate rules have been changed continuously, most notably in 1975, when the Democratic Party ran the Senate and changed the rules from needing 67 votes to overturn a filibuster to 60.
In 1975, Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D, MT) stated: “We cannot allow a minority" of the senators "to grab the Senate by the throat and hold it there." Some of today’s loudest and coarsest senators, like Leahy, Kennedy, Byrd, and Biden, all agreed with Mansfield in 1975. (www.cato.org/dailys/07-16-03.html)
In its 200-plus years of existence, the Senate has not blown-up or suffered appreciably because of a change in rules. This writer even agrees with the Democratic Party’s most senior senator, Robert Byrd, when in 1979, Byrd said that “Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past,” in regard to previous Senate rules and breaking a filibuster. Senator Byrd has enacted and gamed multiple Senate rule changes throughout his long senate career, in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1980, and in 1987.
(washtimes.com/op-ed/20050516-091559-7947r.htm)
So now that a deal has been made, the Senate is saved. This is how the media will play it in the days that follow. Principle is restored, and Senate business can continue as normal. The air is fresh, and the sun is shinning, and a rainbow sparkles after the storm…
What “principles” were ever present when you they this “gang of fourteen” wheeling and dealing judicial nominees like a barterers convention? Or actually suggesting that Bush could pick his court nominees from a pool “possibly selected on the basis of discussions with state and federal chief justices, lawyers, people from academia and so forth.”?
(www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/20/85953.shtml)
If these nominees were “radical” or “out of the mainstream” as Democrats have contended, than how can any of them be acceptable?
If these nominees were “mainstream” and “constitutional constructionist” as Republicans have contended, then how can a single one be expendable in a backroom deal that has the primary interest of seven Republicans that lack backbone and seven Democrats clever enough to buy more time for their party and avert the “nuclear option”?
Thanks to its “principled moderates,” the Republican Party has told the conservative base which put them in power to yield not only the Democratic minority but to the Republican minority that basks in power within the majority. Get it?
How can seven moderate Republican senators continually defy the will of their colleagues, their president, and the 62,000,000 voters--by and large conservative--by cutting a deal that may effectively keep this president from even appointing one Supreme Court jurist?
Well, this is what happens when you seek the adoration of the New York Times and CNN, and forget that you were elected to a party with a conservative platform.
Republican Party, heal thyself, and get rid of your moderates. Quite frankly, you were better in the minority. Now, you are a majority that is ruled by a minority of your own.
With the formation of this “deal,” you have taken one giant step toward minority status again.
And brother, the voters who labored for you don’t deserve it, but maybe you do.
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