Mutually-assured destruction of Democrat obstruction
Just as I am convinced the Democratic Party is rudderless and without an agenda (as evidenced last week by their nomination of Howard Dean to lead them...showing without question that they are scraping the bottom of the political barrel), I am also convinced that they have yet to accept defeat by the American people at the polls. The biggest reason exit polls indicated that people supported President Bush was moral values, and more specifically, many Americans understood that the President would appoint judges that respected those moral values.Yesterday, the President had the intestinal fortitude to submit to the Senate for consideration the names of 20 federal judicial nominees that the Senate failed to act upon in the last term, largely because of Democrat obstructionism. The Jackass Party now says it will engage in obstructionism yet again, with Ted Kennedy going so far as to say that the President is "more interested in picking fights than picking judges." Let's be honest here: The Democrats are interested in picking judges alright, only the ones who embrace their un-American vision for this country.
The response of Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee has been that he prefers to negotiate all of this through diplomacy, rather than change Senate rules. However, to guarantee that these candidates get a fair hearing, he says he has the 51 votes needed to change Senate rules in a very specific way to require that all federal judicial appointments get an up-or-down vote.
I am no fan of Senate rule changes, because the filibuster has been used many times in 200-plus years to block bad legislation, and it ought to continue to be an option for just that purpose. It was never intended as a play-toy to be used by one political faction or another as if they were whining children. This is precisely what Democrats have done to the filibuster. They do not use it as it was intended, to block dangerous legislation (in fact, much of the legislation they have decried as harmful to civil liberties or hurtful to the poor they have allowed to sail through the Senate without a contest), they merely use it to prevent the appointment of judges who think like America.
Senator Charles "Gun-Grabber" Schumer of New York, a man who is likely the second-most liberal member of the U.S. Senate next to his junior Senator (Hillary), has described the proposed rule-change as "the nuclear option:"
"The nuclear option is aptly named because it will blow up the Senate. We don't know if Senator Frist has 51 'yes' votes, but it would be a tragedy for the Senate and for the country if he does. It would reverse almost 200 years of history and dramatically change what the Senate has always been."
I must say that I find it intreaguing that the Democrats were eager to change the rules of both the House and the Senate when they were in control of those bodies in such a way as it benefited them. Now, when the GOP tries the same sort of tactic, the Jackasses accuse the Republicans of attempting to forment nuclear (or as our Fearless Leader would say, "nucular") war.
The Democrats are engaging in this "smear and shear" debate because they know and understand all too well the kind of mandate the Republicans were re-elected on. It was not a mandate for war, because the polls indicated then the same thing that they show us now, the people are uncomfortable with the war. Instead, it was a mandate for moral values and judicial restraint, and it was so pronounced that if the GOP fails to deliver, they may suffer for years to come. The Dems are very aware of this reality, and they know the only tool they have to stop the judicial agenda for which the people sent the new Congress to Washington is to obstruct it.
Many of us have fought very hard in order to be able to have the opportunity to set the judicial agenda for America, that we might have judges who respect life and uphold moral values and Constitutional principles. This may be the only chance we have to make an impact, and it is "our moment in history." Senator Frist knows that we must make history, or merely be a footnote within it.
Here's to the President for having Balls of Brass!
The Washington Times contributed to this post.
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:31 AM
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