Change You Can Filibuster
I rarely make mistakes, but as Fiorello La Guardia was wont to say, when I do make one it’s a beaut. Three and a half years ago, when the prospects of a Democrat President and Senate seemed remote, and the likelihood of Republicans needing to filibuster a nominee seemed remoter, I was furious at John McCain and six other Republicans (yes, it was the Gang of Fourteen, but I didn’t hold it against the other seven, who were Democrats and were therefore supposed to be wrong) for scuttling what some called the nuclear option and others called the constitutional one. After all, I thought, Republicans never filibuster Democrat nominations, so what on earth are these “extraordinary circumstances” in which that Democrat ratchet known as the filibuster should rightfully be employed?
Now, per the New York Times (h/t: Beldar) I may just have my answer. According to the Times, one of the leading candidates for Attorney General is Jamie Gorelick, the single most culpable non-al-Qaeda member in enabling the September 11, 2001 attacks. Between her infamous “wall,” her inexcusable decision to serve on the very 9/11 Commission she should have appeared before, and her five-year stint at Fannie Mae, is there anything that has gone catastrophically wrong over the past decade that Gorelick hasn’t had a hand in? Maybe Gorelick’s not really in the running for the job, and the paper with a record is just throwing random ideas out there, kinda like CNN did a few years ago when they suggested that Bill Clinton could be John Kerry’s Vice President. That’s the HopeTM. But if she actually gets the nomination, then we get ChangeTM and the only thing left to say will be thank God for John McCain and his fellow gangsters for seeing in 2005 what most Real ConservativesTM, myself included, couldn’t. And if the few Republicans remaining in the Senate won’t filibuster a nomination like that, then I’ll have to reluctantly agree with many of my fellow conservatives that the Republicans really did deserve to lose.
PREEMPTIVE UPDATE: Yes, I know the original Gang of Fourteen deal was about judicial nominations, not attorneys general. No, I don’t think that makes a tinker’s damn of a difference. If the Senate had abolished the judicial filibuster on the theory that it was unconstitutional, what on earth basis would there have been for treating filibusters of other appointments any differently?
November 11th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Watch the Dems USE the nuclear option first time there’s a filibuster. And the NY Times will back them, too, saying it’s a remnant of “the old politics.”
November 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am
If you think the Democrats will wait a nanosecond to exercise the "nuclear option" on appointments, you are fooling yourself. McCain and the gangsters just stopped the Republicans from doing what the Democrats will do without a thought. I guess we can congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority as the Dems do so on getting their people approved. To play fair with the Democrats is like plying fair with the Mafia. And there’s an outside chance the Mafia wouldn’t laugh at you.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
Would we have so much worry if option had been taken years ago, and all the open positions filled. Now those openings still exist and the Democrats are going to fill them.
Would the Republicans had lost as badly if they had pushed things thru the senate that the base wanted rather then using political earmarks to buy passage or allowing them to be stopped, having the effect of deenergizing the base.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
You seem to be assuming the nuclear option would have passed. I don’t. Further, the Gang of 14 deal omly left a handful of nominees on the table, so there aren’t that many nominees who would be on the bench under any plausible scenario but aren’t there now. The biggest difference is that we still have the filibuster to use on them.