(Only Republican) Elections Have Consequences

by Kagro X

Hi. Did you know that Republicans were full of shit?

Did you know that Paul Weyrich is a Republican?

Do you know what a syllogism is?

No Senator with whom I spoke disagreed with the proposition that Senator Frist would be required to change the Senate Rules in order to assure confirmation of the next Supreme Court nominee.

Imagine, Democratic National Chairman Howard B. Dean, III, M.D., and various liberal Senators, including two so-called moderate members of the Gang of 14, without knowing the identify of the next nominee, already are trumpeting the filibuster and signaling strong opposition.

Who won the election?

[...]

These Liberals are acting as if they, and not Bush, had won the 2004 Election.

This particular steaming pile is, of course, a variant of the now-shopworn line that "elections have consequences." Has anyone ever asked why Senatorial elections don't have consequences?

Seriously. We've been over this ground before, but apparently this needs repeating: the Senate actually has a vote in judicial confirmations. And those guys and gals who vote? They're elected. Their elections, therefore, must also have consequences. And one of the consequences is that if the American people see fit to send to Washington 40 Senators who think your nominee is ugly and his mother dresses him funny, you're S.O.L., whether you like it or not.

But the nuclear option will take care of that, right? Because elections that Republicans win "have consequences."

Elections won by Democrats do not, as Daily Kos diarist acbonin recently found out in a foray into a Red State discussion of the Roberts confirmation:

As Leon H notes below, the Senate today voted 78-22 to confirm Judge John Roberts as the next Chief Justice of the United States. Here's a list of the Senators who voted against the nomination. If they are waiting for a more qualified nominee, they won't get one. Roberts, after all, has had a stellar legal career and has argued nearly 40 cases before the Supreme Court, a staggering amount.

Recall the following confirmation vote counts:

John Paul Stevens, 1975: 98-0
Sandra Day O'Connor, 1981: 99-0
Antonin Scalia, 1986: 98-0
Anthony Kennedy, 1987: 97-0
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1993: 96-3
Stephen Breyer, 1994: 87-9

Shame on these Senators -- a few Presidential candidates past and future among them -- for blatantly kowtowing to their most liberal interest groups rather than putting partisanship aside and focusing on his impressive qualifications. In so doing, they have started down a most dangerous road. If you live in one of these states, you should tell them you don't appreciate it, let them know they're out of touch with mainstream America.

Mr. Bonin?

I'm confused

By: acbonin

I thought what Republicans demanded were "up-or-down" votes on every judicial nominee.  Turns out, what you really want is just an "up" vote on each of them. Your attempts to still paint Democrats as extremists for having less-than-half of them voting against your nominee, while never attempting a filibuster, are sad.  Roberts won with a support of the majority of Democrats, despite a thinner judicial record than anyone since Thomas (and for a loftier post).  Stop positioning, and be glad you got your man.

Exactly so. Exactly so. But the Republican duplicity goes even further. There is simply no vote count that would have been acceptable to Republicans, unbound as they are by reason and logic. The mechanism for tarring even compliant Democrats as obstructionists porn lords and traitors was already in place, and no amount of appeasement -- whether it be 44 votes or 22 -- would derail the train.

That's why I've been suspicious of strategies that insist that careful gaming of Democratic votes on Roberts would make a difference in Bush's next nomination. It's all conjecture, though admittedly no moreso than my own prognostications. Many in the liberal blogosphere believe that the nomination of another cipher -- say, for instance, the woman they're calling "the female John Roberts," Maureen Mahoney -- can only mean that the strategy succeeded, in that it forced Bush off his game, making it impossible to deliver on his campaign promise to nominate Justices in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. That assumes, of course, that his game plan really did include making such nominations, as opposed to simply using their names as an applause line at revival town hall meetings (cf., Thomas Frank).

Weyrich, perhaps because his personal and professional fortunes depends on it, professes to believe the hype:

The cornerstone of the Bush Campaign a year ago was that if re-elected President Bush would nominate Justices to the Supreme Court "like Scalia and Thomas."

[...]

During the 2004 Bush Campaign President Bush received the strongest applause while delivering his line about judges.

Really? What a shocker! First, of course, because I missed the memo outlining the new mandate-by-applause-meter standard. But secondly, because I'm so completely astonished that Bush would be able to generate such thundrous applause from among the crowds assembled for his campaign stops, usually so incredibly diverse that "overzealous volunteers" were constantly having to throw out citizens who took them past their quota of liberals! Who would've thought such random folks as might be found at a Bush rally could be depended on to provide applause on cue?

Next, the predictable swipe at liberals, and the refloating of that tired canard, the "Ginsburg standard":

The 22 Senators who voted against Roberts profess to believe that Roberts didn't answer questions posed by the Senators. Roberts followed the Ruth Bader Ginsburg precedent, herself a former ACLU counsel, who often had expressed controversial opinions. During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing she refused to hint at how she would rule on cases which possibly might come before the Supreme Court. Of course, the next nominee will go down the same path.

We've all long since glazed over for all the talk of this "Ginsburg standard," but how much of a standard is it, anyway? It's perfectly reasonable to say that making a nominee answer certain hypotheticals might be construed as expressing some sort of disqualifying prejudice about similar cases, should they reach the Court (although it should be noted that some Republicans consider certain hypotheticals more hypothetical than others.) But that only tells half the story. The real question is whether or not it's reasonable to compare not getting answers on hypotheticals from a nominee who has a prolific and quite readily accessible written record, as was the case with Ginsburg, with the same response from a blank slate whose records are being withheld, as was the case with Roberts. Still, Weyrich is right on one point: the next nominee will go down the same path, whether she's a known quantity like Janice Rogers Brown, or a cipher like John Roberts. The strategy will be the same, because Democratic Senators have allowed the rule to become the same, no matter whether the nominee's writings speak for themselves, or are in "executive privilege" lockdown. We have had an excellent explanation as to why they had to let it happen, but there it is. Nobody has to say nothin' no more.

So on that score, though Weyrich is still unquestionably full of it, we're all eating from the same plate from here on in.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Playing for the 7 Rs in the gang of 14, or Weyrich, is so different than playing to the public.

Whatever the Democrats do, they have to explain it to their constituencies. And, if they're running for president they have diverse constituencies.

[emptywheel]

No Kagro, you must be mistaken. They only use applause-o-meters at airband contests, not Presidential politics.

[Kagro X]

Only five of the seven Rs are even arguably in play. And of those five, I don't count many who are terribly susceptible to the, "Yeah, you're right. You were reasonable and my team wasn't, so screw them," line of thinking.

I don't have anything else to offer them, and I do believe that those "aye" votes are all survivable for everyone who cast them, so I wouldn't have locked the doors and set the caucus room on fire. But that doesn't mean I have faith in the thinking. Nor do I think it's testable. Which means there'll be little enough learned with certainty that we could be vulnerable to the same play over and over again.

[Dean]

I too am very suspicious of "strategies that insist that careful gaming of Democratic votes on Roberts would make a difference in Bush's next nomination." One can not assume that the opponent in this particular chess game is anything other than a sociopath. Assuming that the Bush Republicans might be "fair" or reasonable or trustworthy is foolish. I'm through trusting them to any degree at all and through with ever giving them the benefit of a doubt about anything.

[muledriver]

"That's why I've been suspicious of strategies that insist that careful gaming of Democratic votes on Roberts would make a difference in Bush's next nomination."

The votes were not intended to directly influence Bush's next nomination. They were intended to influence public opinion of the Democratic position when Bush makes his next nomination.

[Kagro X]

I'm even less hopeful of that result, muledriver. Republicans are already conducting the same kinds of P.R. campaigns they've successfully executed in the past, ignoring the actual vote count and pushing ahead with their plans to tar Democrats as obstructionist and extremist. I've not yet seen even cold, hard facts like the roll call be able to undo one of these pushes.

It's also giving something less than a full accounting to leave the impression that the votes were not intended to influence Bush's nomination -- that's why the word "directly" is key. Influencing public opinion is only useful in this calculus to the extent that it indirectly influences Bush's next nomination, supposedly by making him pause to think about what he's doing, which would be a first.

[Kagro X]

By the way, today's high profile nuclear option lie comes to us from James Taranto, who writes:

But in May, under threat of the so-called nuclear option--a GOP maneuver that would have changed Senate rules to abolish judicial filibusters--seven Democratic senators agreed to a compromise in which they disavowed the filibuster except in "extraordinary circumstances."

[...]

Anyway, if the Democratic compromisers do dishonor their agreement, Republicans can retaliate by going nuclear, vaporizing the filibuster forever.

Spot the spin? If Democrats invoke "extraordinary circumstances," they've "dishonore[d] their agreement." But if Republicans retaliate by going nuclear, they've apparently upheld it. Just another example of the "heads I win, tails you lose" formulation that turned the demand for an "up-or-down vote" into a demand for "up" votes and nothing else.

That's the lay of the land in the P.R. war. The Republicans hold the ground that's definable in black and white, and we're stuck defending the nuance again. When the GOP tries to make the obstructionist tag stick, our answer will be, "Well, since 22 of 44 Democrats voted for Roberts, we're neither for him nor against him, and see, what that means is..."

Smells like... victory.

[Mimikatz]

Does the slight change in the political landscape and the (still remote but not off the radar) possibility of a Dem takeover in the 2006 election alter the GOP's strategy on the nuclear option? After all, the filibuster is the great tool of the minority, and the thing that gives each individual senator some serious bargaining power.

[emptywheel]

Interesting question, Mimikatz. I would imagine the Brownbacks of the world might still go after nukes, because they see it as critical to their ongoing popularity (witness the problems Fristie had when he DIDN'T go nuclear). That is, nukes is the way to keep power, not lose it.

But only about half the GOP Senators think like Brownback.

[RonK, Seattle]

Note, the nuclear trigger has never been tested ... and there is substantial reason to believe it has deteriorated in storage.

The post-Bush era is on the horizon, GOP leadership is in comparative disarray, the next nominee will have difficulty commanding allegiance across the GOP Senate spectrum, and the nuclear doctrine -- together with all of its corollaries -- is not necessarily a precedent the GOP and their core sponsors want to live with when they have an uncertain grip on power in the intermediate future.

[john cook]

Like many on the political left, I’ve grown increasingly concerned with the political right’s apparent success. My immediate response was to try and stem the tide. Doing such things as offering letters to the editor, volunteering at a grass roots level, etc. I’ve also been watching for a reasoned response from the political left. Not so much a reflection of the political right’s network, but an effort to redefine the left in terms of its values. But the more I thought about the crisis the more I realized that my response was largely counterproductive. The reasons being

• The right’s response is a function of its network. The right’s poles of interest (libertarians, religious right, etc.) are increasingly taking a back seat to its network’s needs and consequently subjugating their basic values. AND the right’s network is easily co-opted (neocons) by ideas that the network values and not its poles of interest.
• The right’s network has become unstable. I believe that without the currently defined left it would quickly become chaos. It is vulnerable to swarm affects, its media apparatus is increasingly reflecting its network and its meta-message is losing its bite. This can be seen by the increasing volume and coherence to the network and not each pole’s basic values. The left pointing out the right’s crimes only helps stabilize the right’s network.
• The right’s network depends on the political left taking up an opposite position. The left has frequently done this to the effect of propping up the right’s framework and forcing the right’s poles (e.g., religious right) into an all or nothing response.
• I was defining myself and my network in context of the right’s network. Therefore, not based on distributed values but opposites. A good example is that I could frame my concern for environmental issues in terms the religious right would relate to -- god created the heavens and earth before he created man. Therefore, it was a core value to take care of the earth as a prerequisite to man being healthy, etc.
• I relealized that the left could talk directly to the right’s value poles. The edges of the left and right’s networks were essentially the eye of the hurricane that needed to be linked. Not a fight at the center as most folks talk about.
• Finally, I grew very concerned when I realized that the primary network model of the left would most likely be based on a venture capital market of ideas. And this sole configuration would most certainly become similar to the right’s. Thus offering very little in terms of real solutions/relief at the personal level, i.e., our children’s education, health, etc.
• So, the left needed a network model that could effectively link the edges of the right and left’s networks. Not the center vs. the center!

My belief is that by defining the left’s network into core value poles that are supported via a “venture capital model of ideas” a real sea change could take place, that the left must define these various idea pots as distributed core investment pools. The pools or funded services could be used by the left or right if they were in alignment. The reason being that the value poles would not know a left or right. It would effectively remove the center (current right’s network) from control. And let areas of mutual interest be channeled in a manner that the left was not LEFT behind. This would mean that the edge of the left’s and right’s networks would determine the overall political landscape and not each party’s political hacks. AND FINALLY, it was critical that the network not become the boss as demonstrated by the right’s current situation.

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