Dan Henninger hits the nail on the head when he takes about the fallout of the Senate Democrat obstructionism when he says:
But if you look long enough at the Democratic opposition to Priscilla Owen, Janice Brown and John Bolton, it is impossible not to notice contradictions that undermine the Democratic Party's most basic sense of self.
On the Owen and Brown nominations especially, the Democratic faith system falters badly. Yes, we know Priscilla Owen has ruled "in favor of corporations" and Judge Brown went the wrong way in a lead-paint decision and both are a threat to "privacy" concerns. And for latter-day Democrats all this matters. But I don't see how the Democrats get around at least some voters noticing that obliterating both Priscilla Owen and Janice Brown bears false witness to the party's foundational achievements.
Above all else, from FDR onward, the Democratic Party leveled the American playing fields. We can argue the details and methods for getting there, but it's a done deal. Whether Title IX, women in the professions or blacks in formerly all-white industrial unions, this is the party's legacy, its crown jewel.
But if a smart white woman from good-ole'-boy Texas and a smart conservative black woman from California pose an unacceptable threat to national equilibrium, then years of Democratic moral claims on behalf of "all" women and minorities were hooey. There never was any intention to let conservative women or blacks advance into positions of public authority, not then or now.
Harvard's left-wing faculty tried to blow up Larry Summers for no more than raising the subject. With that event still warm, the non-activist American voters who pay attention to this stuff--and who the Democrats need to win in 2008--are asked to watch the religious left send Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown to the stake--as an act of moral principle. Well, some voters may believe women should advance on merit and others with the aid of affirmative action. But female Republicans can't achieve the nation's second-highest bench on either basis. What route is left for women other than prehistoric political obeisance? Voters have a lot of reason to be cynical these days, but there may be a limit.
Of course, the Republicans are aware of this fact, and this is why they nominated these two judges to provoke this crisis. It serves several different purposes: advances the conservative judicial agenda, weakens Senate Democrats, and creates a new wedge issue for minorities. Many out there want to chracterize this as some kind of obscene power grab that will signify the End of Liberty, but this is mistaken. As Sean Rushton points out:
Despite efforts by special-interest groups on the left and their champions in the Senate, there is nothing sacrosanct about the filibuster of nominees — regardless of the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington imagery Democrats now conjure in support of filibuster rules, the same rules they once called “legislative piracy.” Our founders did not use filibusters. In fact, for the first several Congresses (from 1789 to 1806), a majority of senators always had the power to bring debate to a close (cloture) by a majority vote.
Rules guaranteeing up-or-down majority votes and abolishing the filibuster in various contexts are commonplace in modern Congresses as well. In fact, there are at least 26 laws on the books today abrogating the filibuster. For example:
- You cannot filibuster a federal budget resolution (Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974).
- You cannot filibuster a resolution authorizing the use of force (War Powers Resolution).
- You cannot filibuster international trade agreements (Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2002).
- And as the minority leader, Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.), well knows, you
cannot filibuster legislation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of
1982.
Furthermore, "filibuster" has a connotation with bad, white slaveholders. Consider William Walker, the American advetnurer, invaded Mexico and Central America with a private army in the 1850s, with the idea of taking over the countries, and then annexing them to the United States as new slave-states. This was important, because the new slave-states would preserve the North-South divide in the U.S. Senate, and protect slavery. Hence, he is called in Spanish a flilibustero.
The Senate is no more good or evil than the men that inhabit it. Its rules are pretty arcane, and have a long history of being manipulated for less-than-just ends. This is not to say that the current Senate Democrats are racist, imperalist slave owners. Yet it is ironic that they are using the same techniques the Senate Democrats who fought to protect slavery employed 150 years ago.
The irony is doubly so because they are trying to keep qualified minorities off the Federal bench for political reasons. Henninger is right: Senate Democrats are eroding the most legitimate aspects of their 20th century foundation to mollify the pressure groups that consitute their membership.
The only question is, are Senate Democrats betraying their legacy, or are they re-discovering it?
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