The filibuster is at the heart of our democracy. The only element of our governmental process that can prevent our government from falling into becoming a dictorship of either the right of left.
In the past, the filibuster against all sorts of items placed on the executive calendar have been used by the Republicans against Democratic nominees, but these filibusters, particularly against judicial nominees have been broken. There have already been a number of posts listing these Republican uses of the filibuster
What is offensive to Republicans is that where they failed, Democrats have been sucessful at applying this filibuter against presidential nominations for both the judiciary and executive nominees.
Again, while it has not been used against this presidents nominations to cabinet level appoinments, this fact can be attributed to the fact that Democrats know that these nominations will have a realtively limited term, which co-incides with the term of the president who nominated them.
However, the judiciary, with its lifetime appoinments are another issue entirely.
In the past, when it became obvious that a nomination was so greatly objectionable to the minority, presidents have withdrawn those nominations in the interests of the electorate that did not support the president. After all, a president is not the representative of only those who eleccted him. He has an obligation to the large minority that did not.
A key to the need to maintain the filibuster is the fact that the Democrtats find these candidates so objectionable that they have had to resort to the filibuster and unlike the case of the Republican attemppts, no Democrat, even the most consewrvative, has broken ranks as was the case in the Republican filibusters of the past, most frequently during the CLinton Presidency. Republicans initially had all of the means to filibuster a Clinton nominee, 43 Senators who started voting on filibusters of Clinton nominees, however, it was possible to convince enough Republicans to drop their votes.
The most dangerous aspect of this attempt to eliminate the often used filibuster of judicial nominees is that those Republican senators how most freqently took part in those filibusters of initiated them are now among the loudest opponents of using the filibuster against judicial nominations.
Again, it is only the success of these Democratic filibusters which is causing such consternation among Republicans.
Who is the obstructionist. In the clear light of the objestion of the representatives of 47 percent of the electorate of the United States who voted for a democrat in the past election, it is apparant that the real obstructionist to Congress getting on with its job, it is the president who is the obstuctionist. Many other presidents would at this point, have withdrawn candidates and submitted new nominations that were more acceptable to both sides of the Senate floor.
Not this president, who is devoted to an agenda of creating a dictatorship of the right.
This is something that has been apparent in this presidents repeated actions of trying to legislate from the oval office. He has done this in his repeated attempt to change the law by use of executrive order. His repeated orders to the labor department, which in effect were attempts to overtime pay, and to instruct the staff of thus department to not enforce labor laws is a clear indication of this presidents desire to turn our democracy into a dictatorship of the right. He has not only attempted to legislate from the oval office, as he is accusing so called "activist judges" of legislating from the bench, in any number of areas, such as education, health, housing, social services, the environment.
The one of the major defenses against a dictatorship of the majority, which was clearly the intent of the faounding fathers, is the filibuster.
Given the life terms of judges, there is nowhere in which the filibuster of the judiciary is something that is far more clearly appropriate than its use in any other case.
Legislation can be overturned. The terms of cabinet members end in a relatively short period of time. The nomination of a judge lasts for decades, and once nominated, the judge has no direct obligation to do the will of the electorate.
One of the reasons that nominees are so infrequently filibustered revolves around repect for the office of the president, so most often the appointees are passed, even when the opposition has concerns about this nomination.
However, out of respect for the Senate and the miniority concerns of "political activism" on the part of his nominees, Presidents also remove cnadidates from nominations. Clinton did this on a number of occasions.
One case, the nomination of Lani Guinier, was so objectionable to conservatives that Clinton eventually withdrew this nomination.He also did so with Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. No one noted that presidents normally get their way on nominations for these nominees. Guiniers name was removed from nominations purely based on here strong writings on Civil Rights.
William Weld, a liberal Republican nominated by Bill Clinton for Ambassador to Mexico was vociferously opposed by Jesse Helms, and so, Clinton removed his name from nomination.
It is as contingent for a president to take into consideration the objections of the opposition minority once they have clearly shown their objections as it is for the Senate to respect as many of the presidential nominations as their consciences and duty to their constituents allow.
The Democras have shown their good will towards the president by passing a very large number of his nominations.
It is now time for the president to respect the concerns of a minority, and withdraw those candidates who are so clearly objectionable to every Democratic Senator, as well as the tens of millions of American voters who object to conservative activist judges.
Democratic Senators have done their bit.
It is now time for the president to do his.