For changing the filibuster rule

Concerning the judicial nomination fight in the Senate, it seems to me that the Republicans have no choice but to proceed with the so-called “nuclear option,” which, despite all the hype we hear, is simply a change in the Senate rules saying that the filibuster cannot be used on judicial nominations. That Livy-quoting gasbag Robert Byrd complained in the Senate the other day that the Republicans were robbing senators of the “right to debate.” That might be arguable if we still had the real filibusters of yore, as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where senators, in order to prevent a vote they regarded as a grave injustice, had to stay in physical possession of the floor of the Senate for hours or days at a time, showing by their personal commitment the urgency with which they regarded the issue. Today’s filibusters don’t involve holding the Senate floor, but are merely bureaucratic affairs, consisting of a formal—not actual—condition of “debate” which can only be ended with a cloture vote by 60 Senators. These phony filibusters deserve no respect or protection, particularly when used to stop routine judicial nominations which under the Constitution require only the “consent”—a majority, not a super-majority—of the Senate.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 16, 2005 07:26 AM | Send