Filibuster is now considered extreme
Tue May 24, 2005 at 07:46:17 PM PDT
(I have been out of the country for 2 days. What a way to ruin a long sought vacation)
Practically this deal killed the filibuster for any judicial nominees in the future. If Janice Rogers Brown, who thinks FDR was akin to a commie and the New Deal was the worst thing that happened and the Lochner Supreme Court decision which denies the government the right regulate at all is the right decision, if she becomes a standard of acceptable nominee, well then there is no one who will satisfy the definition of "extraordinary" as per this misbegotten agreement. No one will ever be filibusterable again or there will not be another nominee who Democrats and Republicans with conxciences should vote against.
We have effectively given up the right to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. We gave it up for NOTHING.
Frist is not abiding by it at all. As you can see by moving on Myers
We have now allowed the Republicans to reframe a filibuster as something extreme.
We have no short term win in the Senate .
We have no long term win in the Senate.
We have denied to ourselves an issue to run in the next 2 elections. We
We can no longer paint them as extremists, abusing power.
We got rooked and they will do it again.
I swear some of the people on too many sites like this one and MY DD are becoming too much like all those elected official insiders.
a smart post from two young people. TAPPED and TNR
THE EVER-SHIFTING CENTER. I think T.A. Frank makes some good points here:
Of course, if Democrats had been filibustering half of Bush's 200-some nominees instead of only a handful, or if, for example, they had spoken endlessly of "maintaining balance on the courts" and insisted that Bush also nominate some "centrists" and not only "extremists," then a compromise position would have looked very different. But by bracketing the debate between two right-wing extremes--confirm every nominee except for a handful or confirm every nominee through use of the nuclear option--the Republicans had won before they'd even begun.
Meanwhile, skilled negotiators that they are, Republicans have been wise enough not to gloat over their victory. "It has some good news and it has some disappointing news, and it will require careful monitoring," says Bill Frist, admirably feigning disappointment. Meanwhile, Democrats, who must now back down and allow the confirmation of some truly radical judges, don't feel humiliated. In fact, they speak as if they've won. "In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held," Joe Lieberman proudly announced. And here's Assistant Democratic Leader Richard Durbin of Illinois: "There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed."
That seems about right to me. Filibustering significantly fewer than 10 percent of Bush's nominees already was using the filibuster in "extraordinary circumstances." That's particularly true when you consider that Bush faced an uncommonly large number of vacancies purely because of Republican procedural stalling of Bill Clinton's nominees. Now as with any deal, of course, you have to ask, "good or bad compared to what?" The question poses itself on two levels. On the policy substance, distasteful as this is, it's clearly better than the alternative of letting the GOP go nuclear and confirm all their judges. But at the level of framing and rhetoric, it's worse.
As of yesterday morning all the Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, held the view that the nuclear option was wrong and that all of the remaining judges would be blocked. That was, as of yesterday, the moderate position in that it had some bipartisan support, while the nuclear option was a partisan, extremist move. Even if the Democrats lost the nuclear vote, that framing element would still be in place. Now that old, moderate, bipartisan stance has been redefined as an extremist liberal position, just as partisan and nutty as the Bill Frist Calvinball option.
--Matthew Yglesias
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