A little honesty, please
Can Democrats and Republicans stop pretending that there is some exquisitely fine distinction between judicial filibusters and legislative filibusters that makes flip-flopping on whatever they said five years ago something other than a gossamer-thin wrapping for the otherwise naked use of power? Or that they really, deep down, care about the deepest arcana of Senate procedure?
The fact is that Republicans are going to shove conservative judges down liberal throats because they can, not because there is some cosmic principle of justice involved. And Democrats should tone down the histrionics about the fundamental illegitimacy of Republican court-packing, when the reason the Republicans are so determined to pack the court is that it is the only way Democrats have left them to undo the quasi-legislation that liberal judges wrote after Democrats packed the court decades ago. Having remade the rules about how legislation gets made, you can't just tell the Republicans that it's some sort of metaphysical abuse if they try to touch the ball.
I kind of envy the writing style too. I couldn't say as much in so few words. I'll bet you a dollar she has a copy of The Elements of Style on her desk.
I take issue with Jane Galt's premise that power grabs are necessarily devoid of principle, and with her blurring of the important distinction between judicial and legislative filibusters. Hair-splitting or not, the fact that the Constitution spells out when two-thirds majorities are required ought to count for something. Reasonable people can disagree on how far to go in protecting minority prerogatives in the Senate or elsewhere. Tragically, it seems that Frist and some other Republican leaders are stooping to the histrionic level of Democrats such as Reid and Byrd, rather than acting like a responsible majority should.
Posted by: Andrew | May 24, 2005 at 02:56 PM