WHEN LIBERALS LOSE POWER, THEY TURN CONSERVATIVE

Corrupting the Character Of the Senate (Al Hunt, Wall Street Journal, 6/5/2003)

The more the Senate rushes to do everything by a simple majority "as the easy way out of sticky situations," [former Senator Dan] Quayle warned in September 2000, "the more the Senate becomes just another cog in a legislative machine."...

But Senate prerogatives would be brushed aside by GOP leader Bill Frist, prodded by his right-wing caucus including predecessor Trent Lott, to, largely by a party-line fiat, end the right to filibuster judicial nominations....

New Mexico's Pete Domenici lambasts Democrats for blocking a couple judicial nominations but says "it will be very difficult for me to change the filibuster rule. I always thought the filibuster rule protected the minority." John McCain agrees.

And listen to a bona fide conservative, Mississippi's other senator, Republican Thad Cochran, an ardent supporter of all the Bush judicial nominations. "It's very important that one faction or one party not be able to ride roughshod over the minority and impose its will. The Senate is not the House." He says he flatly opposes changing the filibuster rule....

Lawmakers should carefully read a letter sent to the Senate this week by Robert Caro, the acclaimed biographer of Lyndon Johnson. "The nation's Founders depended on the Senate's members to stand up to a popular and powerful President," this scholar writes. "In the case of judicial appointments, the Founders specifically mandated the Senate to play an active role." The proposed filibuster changes, he notes, have profound consequences: "Senators should realize that they are dealing not with the particular dispute of the moment, but with the fundamental character of the Senate of the United States, and with the deeper issue of the balance between majority and minority rights."

Ultimately the law of unintended consequences would kick in. One day Democrats will control both the White House and the Senate; these passion-of-the-moment right wingers then would rue the day they brushed aside the Senate's ability to debate, deliberate and delay.

Al Hunt, who normally doesn't string two cogent thoughts together, writes a fine column today, as he gets a chance to support the Democrats while making a conservative case. He's right: By obstructing change and forcing compromise and cooperation, the filibuster is a conservative institution, and weakening it would harm the nation.

Nevertheless, in filibustering Republican judicial nominees Democrats have "gone nuclear," and "nuclear" retaliation is called for. The best way to do this is in the budget. Republicans can simply shut down New Deal and Great Society socialist-style programs that subsidize Democratic constituencies and state governments and promote dependency upon government by individuals, while proposing cooperative, "compassionate conservative" alternatives that provide a social safety net while making recipients dependent upon their fellow citizens rather than government. Republicans can say: you Democrats can have the judiciary your way or the budget, but not both. Thus would some sort of policy equality be restored, and incentives created for equitable compromise.

I understand that politically, this cannot happen until after the 2004 elections. But now is the time to start preparing the public by emphasizing the radical nature of the Democratic filibusters, which have overturned more than 200 years of custom and threaten to depopulate the judiciary.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at June 5, 2003 11:03 AM