Senator Harry Reid went for the Nuclear option
[On The Media]
National Review Online, while claiming to support a change in Senate procedure in order to “overcome partisan obstruction,” refused to acknowledge that it was hyper-partisan obstructionism that forced Senate Democrats to embrace the so-called “nuclear option.”
On Thursday, Senate Democrats approved a rule change that will finally allow an up-or-down vote for President Obama’s nominees, who have been the victims of unprecedented Republican obstructionism. NRO, like other right-wing media outlets, colorfully responded to the rule change, with John Fund calling Democrats “snake-oil salesmen.”
From NRO’s November 21 editorial:
The Democrats here are helping themselves to ill-gotten gains. Using the filibuster and other stalling techniques, they kept judicial vacancies open by closing them to Bush nominees.
[…] The filibuster is not sacred writ, and we are on record supporting procedural changes to overcome partisan obstruction. The more serious concern here is that the Democrats are attempting to pack the courts, especially the D.C. Circuit court, with a rogue’s gallery of far-left nominees. That is worrisome in and of itself, but there is a deeper agenda: Much of what President Obama has done in office is of questionable legality and constitutionality. The president no doubt has in mind the sage advice of Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.” He is attempting to insulate his agenda from legal challenge by installing friendly activists throughout the federal judiciary. That is precisely what he means when he boasts, “We are remaking the courts.” Republicans are in fact obstructing those appointments; unlike the nomination of John Roberts et al., these appointments deserve to be obstructed.
The filibuster is a minor issue; the major issue is that President Obama is engaged in a court-packing scheme to protect his dubious agenda, and Harry Reid’s Senate is conspiring with him to do so. The voters missed their chance to forestall these shenanigans in 2012. They made the wrong decision then, and have a chance to make partial amends in 2014, when they will be deciding not only what sort of Senate they wish to have, but what sort of courts, and what sort of country.
Fund joined the chorus in a separate post, minimizing GOP obstructionism and advancing the myth that new judges are not needed on the D.C. Circuit because the court’s caseload is “provably so light.” Fund went on to imply Senate Democrats were hypocrites because they spoke out against the use of the nuclear option by the GOP to push through President Bush’s ultra-conservative jurists back in 2005.
Setting aside the fact that “court-packing” really doesn’t mean what NRO thinks it means, it is strange that the editorial board would go out of its way to point out that it supports procedural changes in the face of extreme partisanship, but then completely fails to mention the unprecedented partisan obstructionism advanced by Senate Republicans. Although Democrats opposed some of Bush’s nominees, ultimately four out of six of his picks were confirmed to the D.C. Circuit. Obama has been successful in appointing one person to that same circuit — every other nominee has been filibustered. Senate Republicans have blocked Cornelia “Nina” Pillard, Patricia Millett, and current district court judge Robert Wilkins from being confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, despite having no real concerns about the qualifications or ideological stance of the nominees.
NRO also completely ignores that Republican obstructionism has not been limited to judicial nominees — they have also blocked Obama’s picks for executive offices. This strategy goes beyond “typical” opposition with the goal of nullifying the federal agencies that Republicans dislike, and has resulted in half of all filibusters against presidential nominations in the history of the Senate occurring during the Obama presidency. As People For The American Way explains, Republicans used the filibuster to advance their conservative policies because they are “unable to achieve their preferred policies by winning elections”:
Republicans blocked President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, preventing the agency from achieving a quorum; in so doing, they successfully sabotaged enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act without actually amending the law. They refused for a full two years to confirm a head to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which prevented it from exercising some of its most important authorities; they admitted they had no problem with the nominee (Richard Cordray) but instead wanted to force Democrats to change the law and weaken the newly-created agency.
And of course, President Obama’s nominee to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina, is in the same position after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on his nomination, making him the first sitting member of Congress to be blocked from confirmation to an Administration position since before the Civil War.
This is the same strategy that House Republicans used when they shut down the federal government and threatened a default on the country’s debt in an attempt to bring down a law that had been enacted by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. Unable to achieve their preferred policies by winning elections, Republicans are attempting to nullify the results of those elections through extreme obstruction.
It is unclear how much obstructionism would be “enough” for NRO to support a procedural rule change. It can’t get much worse.
