Harry Reid and the Democrats: On the Wrong Train
“All aboard!” (Photo courtesy of AFP, via Yahoo)
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV), an antiabortion senator from a state that President Bush carried handily in both 2000 and 2004, has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts. Not only will he vote NO for the confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. as our next Chief Justice, but he doesn’t seem to believe that Bush even deserves to choose his own Supreme Court nominees. As reported in The Washington Post’s lead editorial today, a profound quote from Reid:
“The president is not entitled to very much deference in staffing the third branch of government, the judiciary.”
These astonishing words certatinly caught the eye of WaPo’s editorial board, who only just last Sunday endorsed the Roberts nomination. (N.B.: I thought that the Old Gray Hag had endorsed him as well, but I seem to have been off by an ideology or two. Apologies.)
In today’s editorial, The WaPo editors caution Reid and his party:
This country has only one president at a time. That president, right now President Bush, is tasked with naming judges. The Senate has the role of providing advice and consent on the president’s choices, which is a significant constitutional task. But if the presidential election means anything in this arena, it must mean that the president’s choice has a heavy presumption of confirmation. That is the way the system works. Why else would Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have received only a handful of no-votes among them? During the Clinton administration, we deplored the way that the Senate treated the president’s judicial nominees during six years of Republican control over the Senate. Yet during those six years, the Senate confirmed 245 of President Bill Clinton’s judges. If Republicans had been applying Mr. Reid’s standard, they would have been within their rights to reject them all.
Do Democrats really want the American confirmation system to move in that direction?
To answer: I believe that Democrats really do want the confirmation process to ramble on into even more disrepute than we’ve witnessed over the last five years. Maybe it’s because they haven’t considered that the next Democrat president might, just might, have a Republican-led Senate. Immersed in denial that they are still in the minority, Democrats have hitched their cars to Howard Dean’s locomotive of hate, with Reid as the conductor. They are determined to single-mindedly point fingers and grouse at Bush and the GOP-led congress, rather than develop policies of their own. Their position that no future Bush SCOTUS nominee to the right of O’Connor will be acceptable, no matter how well qualified he or she is, is a brand of blind minority opposition unprecedented in this nation’s modern history.
In short: Democrats are barrelling down a one-way track of spiteful rhetoric that will send them over a political cliff. The crash could very well echo for a generation or more. But it seems to largely be the passengers on that train who are demanding which track is chosen.
If you follow the money, it all becomes rather obvious. While Reid says he will oppose Roberts for Chief Justice, he is resigned to Roberts probably receiving “plenty of votes” from the left side of the Senate aisle. This possibility, however, does not sit well at all with such powerful activist groups as the ACLU (which appears to be none too keen on Roberts), NARAL, and MoveOn.org. Liberal special interest groups are already threatening Senate Democrats, as reported in the WaPo:
Some Democratic activists said the party risks alienating its contributors by not uniting against Roberts. “Many, many people in the donor base are feeling discouraged and want to see the Democrats fight back,” said Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily’s List. “If they see Democrats falling in line with Republicans, they’re going to say, ‘There’s no need for me to support them.’ ”
Malcolm said prospective 2008 presidential candidates face the wrath of party activists if they support Roberts, and then he and the majority of the court rule against abortion rights.
Clearly, the explosion of special interest money in the nomination process will keep as merely a memory those halcyon days (as recently as 1986) when an Antonin Scalia could be confirmed unanimously, or (as recently as 1993) when a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all dolled up in her red ACLU scarf-and-bonnet combo, could be confirmed 96-3. Reid’s comment above has the power to further corrupt an already inhospitable judicial confimation landscape, perhaps irreparably, should it be taken to heart by his senate colleagues. Yet, this is what the passengers on the Deniac Express wish to see out their windows. It’s what they’ve paid for.
If Sen. Reid is not merely along for the ride on the Deaniac Express but also selling tickets on this mad train, he might want to think rather of where the present track leads — especially in the event that the nay-saying minority Democrats remain just that: a nay-saying minority. Should some future Republican Senate refuse to offer reasonable deference to a Democrat president for his or her SCOTUS nominations, the Democrats may have Conductor Reid to thank, and no one else.
Originally posted at TMH’s Bacon Bits
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Posted by The MaryHunter on September 21, 2005 4:53 pm
» Filed Under ACLU
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8 Responses to “Harry Reid and the Democrats: On the Wrong Train”
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I think that the ships mast is about to sink under water. It slays me, that the Democratic party does not see the damage it is doing to itself with each of these temper tantrums.
Hey, I’m into all the metaphors we can muster for this sad show, and I like yours. There’s something in that that reminds me of the odd masochistic tendencies of those with borderline personality disorder.
Great job on this TMH. So true what Epiphany said. They fight and fight and only hurt themselves.
Thanks Jay. You know, once upon a time, the Dems used to be a reasonable political force, something that helped make politics interesting. Now they’re simply self-destructive hacks utterly beholden to their special interests and $$. Curious strange.
This whole affair with the nomination process should be a huge eye opener for Liberals and a lot of Democrats. They need to pay close attention to who is voting against Roberts’ nomination, and if they happen to have working brains, realize that these Liberal lefty Senators who say they have the peoples best interest at heart are full of crap. Who in their right mind would stand there and agree with any Senator who says in not so many words that they agree wholeheartedly with judges making law from the bench that strips religious freedoms, allows the taking of peoples homes by the states, and murders unborn children? You have to be one sick individual to have even a passing thought that this is “progress” as it was called by some brain dead Liberal who wrote in my local paper. Roberts gave the correct answer to these Senators questions on how he would rule. He said that he would enforce the constitution, and base his decisions by what was in it, IE: He would not make law from the bench. This was the correct answer and the only one needed or required. Those who vote against Roberts should be voted OUT in their next election.
Wonderful comment, Mr. Wonderful. Thanks for your input.
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Is it just me, or should his call sign be “Eeyore?”
I think you’ve got something there LOL