In their latest "czar" smear, conservatives have moved from the politics of "gotcha" toward what amounts to an unabashed assault on the Constitution. Not the fictional Constitution invented out of whole cloth and invoked ad nauseum by Glenn Beck and his over-counted minions, which magically promotes the full cohabitation of church-and-state, the implicit rejection of election results promoted by the "birther" movement, the invasion of rights against unreasonable search and seizure when it comes to a woman’s own body, the outright intimidation of public officials and citizens daring to make their voices and concerns known in the public square; but the real one.
The question is: Qui bono? Who benefits? Who benefits from these assaults on government "of the People, by the People, for the People."
From the Washington Times, September 15, 2009:
"The latest of these [czar] targets is David Michaels, Mr. Obama's pick to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), who as an academic published a book attacking corporate executives for the tactics they used to fight class-action lawsuits. Republican critics said they considered Mr. Michaels to be too close to trial lawyers because of his aggressive advocacy on their behalf.
"’We are definitely troubled by Michaels' nomination,’ said Keith Smith, the director of employment and labor policy and the National Association of Manufacturers. ‘We will be urging the Senate committee to carefully review his nomination.’
This is not the case of an individual who dared use "hot button" expressions in an interview or a lawyer who made the mistake of describing a range of other people’s opinions in a textbook or some other trumped up or mischaracterized past circumstances in someone’s (often academic) life.
No, the question now is: Should a corporation or trade association, such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) be able to squelch the appointment of a clearly qualified candidate to the position of head of OSHA. Indeed, one must ask if the attack on Michaels is not, in reality, an attack on the existence of OSHA itself, or if it is possible for President Obama to appoint someone not pre-approved by the Republicans.
I have felt for some time that Glenn Beck, who has neither the intelligence nor the emotional stability to be cooking this stuff up on his own, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Only a truly organized, insidious, and directed force can be at work here, laboring behind the scenes, perhaps in the "brain room" at Fox Studios, perhaps at the highest levels of the Republican Party, or perhaps -- and most concerning of all -- perhaps in the board rooms of multi-national corporations or the associations representing them, whose primary allegiance is to a class of advantaged members or stockholders and often not to the people of any one country, much less our United States.
They can do this because the Republicans have the discipline of "No." They can stand with uniform opposition against whatever initiative they are attempting to squelch, a phalanx emboldened by an unlikely secret weapon – the ability to prevent the invocation of cloture – to threaten filibuster.
President Obama, Democratic Senators, it’s time for the meaning of the Constitution of the United States to be examined in respect to these developments. These antagonists of our system of government are developing new skills and new methods. Though fronted by an emotionally and intellectually challenged clown, we are witnessing the emergence of a new more powerful manifestation of the "special interests" that Obama and Democratic majorities in both Houses were was elected to confront. It is an emergence worthy of the Age of Derivatives, a fascism of Corporations rather than human beings.
Up to this point, these special interests have been content to function primarily through the time-honored traditions of graft and arm-twisting. Now however, wielding the spectre of filibusterlike a battle ax, combined with their ability to march in lockstep like a company of Storm Troopers, they are set up to receive instructions from entities neither elected nor dedicated to our country over others. This is a new level of threat to the vitality of our system of government, which was designed to be balanced, flexible and representative. We are at Level Orange looking at Level Red and wondering what it will be like.
The supra-Constitutional elevation of the cloture motion (a once obscure bit of Senate tradition that until 2004, see chart, was used only in extremis) to the status of an essential override of the Constitutional requirement that a majority vote (not a supermajority of 60) is the requirement for Senate action, has reached a tipping point. The question is whether the system of government laid out in the Constitution can prevail in a setting in which a minority political party, by marching in lock-step, jack-booted conformity to the siren call of outside interests.
The Senate surrendering to extra-Constitutional measures such as cloture and budget reconciliation (used to balance the impact of increased invocation of cloture) presents a deviation from what the Founding Fathers had in mind, to such a degree that the careful balance of powers worked out in the long sessions of 1787, as captured in the 85 articles of the Federalist Papers?
Both Republicans and Democrats face a question now. Do you place the power of the Constitution over the accidental traditions of the Senate (a remnant of a polite age which bears little resemblance to our own), over your own personal power to swing a vote when you are in the minority, and over the will of the American people expressed in elections and invested, as a sacred privilege, in you? Or will you allow the erosion and eventual collapse of an effective, balanced and unique system for embodying the Will of the People in laws designed to "insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." It’s come to this. Act wisely.