Liberty and Justice for All!

Nobody has used the filibuster as much as the GOP has this year. The GOP are even filibustering bills that they would support of they were in power just to hand Obama political defeats. To them, political victories are more important than passing policy (even if the policy is one that they would agree with).

That being said, there are liberals who are saying that you only need a majority to eliminate the 60 vote cloture requirement. Senator Tom Udall believes that it can be done at the beginning of each Congress when they “set the rules”. He is calling it the “constitutional” option.

The Constitution is clear. It allows the Senate to make its own rules. Any rule that the Senate makes must then be deemed constitutional (unless it violates a specific requirement placed on Congress listed in the Constitution). The Constitution does not require the rules to be rewritten every term.

You and I both know that had the GOP actually used parliamentary trickery to eliminate the filibuster when they had control, that the Democrats would have cried foul. Had they actually used the “nuclear option”, they would have been the target of harsh campaign ads.

Democrats, we all want to point out that the GOP is being a bunch of hypocrites for campaigning against the stimulus while using the funds in the stimulus to bolster their political careers. However, when making that argument we need to do so with clean hands. If we start acting like Republicans in trying to eliminate the filibuster by doing it outside of a simple rules change as defined in the Senate rules, we will look like hypocrites (well, you will… because I do not agree with parliamentary trickery and am firmly stating so here).

Republicans often threatened to use the “nuclear option” to eliminate the ability of Democrats to filibuster the judicial nominees of President Bush. Harry Reid has stated that Democrats have taken the “nuclear option” off the table.

I was waiting to see what might happen if the Republicans prove themselves (again) to be hypocrites by actually going against the false claim that an “up or down vote” is required by the Constitution (especially since talks of judicial filibusters are gearing up). I was ready to criticize Democrats had they threatened to use the nuclear option. I am glad that I don’t have to.

In my last post I linked to this article showing the hypocrisy of Republicans that I knew would come out once we got a Democrat in the White House.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Let us look at some statements by John Kyl on the issue of up or down votes:

It doesn’t make sense, Mr. President, to suggest that a tradition of this Senate to give people an up-or-down vote is all of a sudden going to be overturned because all of a sudden a President is proposing people that are wildly out of mainstream.

But yet that is exactly what Kyl suggests he will do on Obama’s nominees.

You can still vote against the nominee. You don’t have to vote for the nominee, but at least give them an up-or-down vote.

That is, unless you don’t. Basically, Kyl is against filibusters on judicial nominees except for when he is for them. Hypocrite.

I rather ask them to approach this on the basis of moving forward in a bipartisan way to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities to grant these judges an up-or-down vote, to provide our advice and consent so-that we can put people on the court in these very important positions to serve the American people.

I explain why Kyl is completely wrong here.

Also, what Kyl seems to forget is that Republicans blocked many Judicial nominees in committee. By doing so, not only did they not afford those nominees an “up or down” vote that they claim is required. By doing so they managed to prevent a nomination from getting that vote with far less than the 41 votes needed to maintain a filibuster.