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Banned
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I thank God that there are still a few decent Republicans remaining in the senate.
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/index.ssf?050307fa_fact">http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/index.ssf?050307fa_fact</a>
.......................Frist’s enthusiasm may not be enough to get the fifty Republican votes he needs to change the rules. On February 10th, Frist told the Washington Times that he had fifty-one votes, but a few days later, to me, he said, “I’m not going to talk about vote counts.” Senator John McCain, of Arizona, seems likely to oppose the idea. “We Republicans are not blameless here,” McCain told me. “For all intents and purposes, we filibustered Clinton’s judges, by not letting them out of committee. Making this change would put us on a slippery slope to getting rid of the filibuster altogether. It’s not called ‘nuclear’ for nothing.” Several other Republican senators also expressed reservations about the idea, often using similar language. Chuck Hagel, from Nebraska, said that he was undecided, and added, “I think the judges deserve up-or-down votes, but the filibuster is an important tool for the minority in the Senate.” Susan Collins, a moderate from Maine, who is also undecided, said, “It’s wrong for the Democrats to filibuster judges, but I’m concerned about the effect on the work of the Senate if the constitutional, a.k.a. nuclear, option is pursued.” John Sununu, a first-termer from New Hampshire, and Lamar Alexander, Frist’s junior colleague from Tennessee, have not made up their minds, either. Even Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who supports the rules change, seemed to speak for many when he said, “Nobody wants to blow the place up.”
That—or something close to it—is what Democrats are threatening. “On both sides of the aisle, even among a good number of Republicans who are quite conservative, they know the nuclear option dramatically changes this place,” said Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat, who has been a leader for his party on judicial confirmations. “It makes the Senate into the House of Representatives. We are no longer the cooling saucer. The whole idea of the Senate is you need a greater degree of bipartisanship, comity, than in the House. And there are many conservative senators, particularly the ones who’ve been around a long time, who will not change that.” As Richard Durbin put it, “Several of the Republican members have been in the minority, and they know they will not be in the majority forever. They don’t want to do this to the institution.” But on every important vote of the past four years the Republicans have ultimately rallied to support the President.
The possibility of a Democratic retaliation—the Party’s own attempt at all-out war—is real. Even without the filibuster, Senate rules give a minority the chance to make life miserable for the majority. A single member can gum up the legislative machinery, as Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat, who was his party’s leader for a decade in the Senate, explained. “The Senate runs on ‘unanimous consent,’” Daschle said. “It takes unanimous consent to stop the reading of bills, the reading of every amendment. On any given day, there are fifteen or twenty nominations and a half-dozen bills that have been signed off for unanimous consent. The vast work of the Senate is done that way. But any individual senator can insist that every bill be read, every vote be taken, and bring the whole place to a stop.” Daschle also doubted that the limitations on filibustering would in the future be applied only to judicial nominations. “Within ten years, there’d be rules that you can’t filibuster tax cuts,” he said.
Last November, Daschle became the first party leader in a half century to be defeated for reëlection. In a strongly Republican state, he lost a close race to John Thune, a telegenic former congressman, who made effective use of the fact that Daschle had once referred to himself as a District of Columbia resident. But another of Thune’s arguments was that Daschle had become the “obstructionist-in-chief.” Daschle’s defeat may make a strategy based on tying up the Senate appear less than promising for the Democrats.
Specter has done his best to try to avoid a confrontation. He plans to bring up some of Bush’s less controversial judicial nominees first, in an attempt to build momentum for compromise. But on February 14th Bush formally resubmitted to the Senate seven nominees whom the Democrats had filibustered in the previous two years. The confrontation may be delayed, but now, clearly, it can’t be avoided. Specter’s appetite for a fight may be lessened for personal reasons. On February 16th, he announced that he had Hodgkin’s disease. Last week, Specter told the Washington Post,“If we go to the nuclear option . . . the Senate will be in turmoil and the Judiciary Committee will be hell.”
One day outside the Senate chamber, I saw John Warner in an uncharacteristic pose for a politician. He had squeezed himself up against one of the old stone walls in an attempt to remain out of camera range while another senator talked to the press. In the first few years following his election in 1978, Warner was known more for being Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband than for any legislative achievements. (The marriage lasted from 1976 to 1982.) But Warner, who is now seventy-eight, patiently moved up through the ranks, and today chairs the Armed Services Committee and is an important source of institutional memory for the Senate. “When I came to the Senate, I studied the history of the filibuster,” he told me, “and unlimited debate has been an essential part of what we do since the inception of the body. Of course, the Democrats have pushed too hard and stopped too many judges, and I still don’t know what I’ll do if this thing comes up for a vote. I’m worried about it, and I’m worried about what’s happening to the Senate. You see, I’m a traditionalist. That’s my party.”
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