Once More On The "Gonzales Riots" And GOP Filibuster Hypocrises

by Steve Soto

(Thanks to PollingReport.com for the graphic)

I plan to talk about several new things such as immigration and taxes later this week, but before I do, I want to say a few things on the high-visibility issues that are before us now.

First, and once again, while the Mighty Wurlitzer churns on and on about the “Newsweek Riots”, has the Pentagon categorically denied that instances of Koran desecration have been used as interrogation techniques? No. The closest they have come is an after-the-fact statement from the Pentagon that the original Newsweek story was “demonstrably false”. Really? Which part? The Pentagon was given the opportunity to review and respond to the story and punted. Rather than call these the “Newsweek Riots”, Democrats should call the rage in the Islamic world over the desecration of the Koran the “Gonzales Riots” after the man who authored the legal opinion sanctioning the interrogation techniques that led to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and to keep the story focused on what originated the rage in the first place.

Second, Bill Frist plans to employ the GOP-described “nuclear option” this week, purportedly using Karl Rove-financed political tool Priscilla Owen as one of the Trojan horses. The latest GOP talking points put forward by Heritage and now showing up in various op-ed columns around the country are that: 1) the Democratic threat of using filibusters is unprecedented; and 2) the Senate is only supposed to be more or less a rubber stamp in their “advise and consent” of a president’s nominees. Both talking points are revisionist history, given that 1) the GOP has an interesting history of its own with filibusters; and 2) the Constitution (those GOP strict constructionists remember that document, don’t they?) says the following in Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2:

(The president) shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law

It sounds to me like the founders make it clear that the Senate has a little more than a rubber stamp role there. In fact, from the earliest days of the republic to the Clinton presidency, there is a precedent for the president to seek the advice of the Senate in judicial nominees, as a precursor to the necessary consent of the Senate for any successful nominee.

It’s just that Bush is an imperial president with a “my way or the highway” approach, and when this approach weds itself to lifetime appointments for judicial nominees who have sold their decisions to Enron, or who maintain extremist views that can be shown to be out of the mainstream of American society, then the minority party should retain access to the filibuster. Besides, the right wing thought this themselves as recently as 1997.

Why is the GOP so worried about winning a filibuster fight anyway? Let's say that Frist brings forward Owens and Brown as the first Trojan horses and the Democrats filibuster them. Doesn't Frist think that after several days of a filibuster, he can't win an argument in the court of public opinion about how obstructionist the Democrats are being? Or is Frist worried that in his efforts to obtain cloture, Democrats use the opportunity to hold GOP senators directly accountable for supporting such extremists nominees?

Lastly, there’s another political dynamic here with any attempt to eliminate the filibuster. First, once Frist and the rest of the American Taliban controlling both the GOP House and Senate reduce the cloture requirement down to only a simple majority (with Cheney’s help of course), GOP Senate moderates become powerless and unneeded by the GOP leadership and White House. If the filibuster rule is changed to a simple majority, the block of GOP Senate moderates will be utterly ignored and without influence. Secondly, the American public is against the filibuster evisceration that Frist and the American Taliban are aiming to accomplish according to a new poll by Time magazine. Implementing the nuclear option this week will not only give Harry Reid the chance to deploy some measures of his own in response, but will also allow him and Nancy Pelosi to put this latest demonstration of the GOP’s arrogance of power out in front of voters, who already feel that the GOP is spending too much time on irrelevant issues to please the American Taliban.