Senatorial Chicken
His money quote was that Republicans "would rue the day" if they try to make it harder for Democrats to stall judicial nominees who could not get a vote last year.
Hmm. For some reason the waggish quip, "The Mouse That Roared" comes to mind. Sounds like the words of a man who doesn't expect to see the majority again any time soon.
Reid compared Bush's talk of crisis in judicial nominations to the President's rhetoric on Social Security. "He's trying to create crisis with judges and with Social Security. They don't exist," Reid told ABC's This Week.
Except, of course, that Dems themselves were describing Social Security as a "crisis" not much more than a year ago. And no less than the Judiciary Committee's ranking Donk, Pat "Leaky" Leahy, did little else but bleat about the judicial vacancy "crisis" during Bill Clinton's second term, but had no problem at all creating a real one once there was no longer a Dem in the White House.
In point of fact, Democrats wrote the book on crisis-mongering, so this sudden quantum leap into ostrichism is as whiplash-inducing as it is disingenuous.
"We have approved for the President of the United States 204 judges the last four years," he said. "We've turned down 10. Even in modern math, that's a pretty good deal." He said the 10 who did not get a vote in 2004 "were rightfully turned down."
Actually, no, they were not "turned down." They were denied a confirmation vote altogether, and the reason for that was that they would not have been turned down had they not been filibustered in unprecedented and extraconstitutional fashion.
It should also be noted that the "ten" to which Reid unrepentantly refers were the ten that mattered - appellate court nominees, who have a much greater role in determining in which ideological direction the judiciary tilts, and who become automatic potential SCOTUS nominees the minute they're seated.
Asked whether the filibusters would be repeated in the new congressional session, Reid said: "Well, I don't know, unless something's changed, and I don't think a thing in the world has changed. The background of these men and women that he brought forward, the 10 that we turned down, should have been turned down, and we'll turn them down again."
So there it is. And there goes Majority Leader Bill Frist's "hope [that] a new 'optimistic' climate w[ill] take hold" with Reid's succession of the defeated Daschle. He now has no choice - he has to "go nuclear" and change the rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial appointments.
And don't think that, by Reid's brinksmanship, he isn't acutely aware of it:
"If they want to carry that through, it's a short-term victory for them, because they're not going to be in the majority forever," he said. "We're going to be in the majority. That's the way history is. And I think that they would rue the day they did that."
Properly understood, this is a blanket concession of weakness. "They're not going to be in the majority forever"? "That's the way history is"? Well, sure, given enough time, I suppose at some point Reid's party might get the majority back. But in the mean time, they don't have it, and yet they're still acting as though they do. And that's what Senator Frist has to put a stop to.
Besides which, does anybody seriously believe that the Donks as currently comprised would be less ruthless if/when they regained power? My God, Republicans would be fortunate to even be seated. Certainly the Dems would completely re-write the rules to maximally entrench themselves so as to minimize their chances of ever losing the majority again.
That's the mentality at work here. Reid is trying to bully Frist and majority Republicans away from using their power to actually govern as they see fit, rather than as the minority dictates. And he clearly thinks that Frist will cave.
So the ball is in the Tennesseean's court. And if he ever expects to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate in 2008, he had better not hesitate in "pushing the red button."
posted by JASmius at 4:24 PM
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