Ahhhh, hypocrisy, thy name is Republicanism.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Hypocrisy Watch
Anyone else remember the GOP outrage, to the point of wanting to change Senate and House rules, over Democratic filibusters threatened and real over the last few years? Yeah, me too. Well guess who engaged in a filibuster yesterday when Senate Democrats tried to pass a minimum wage bill free of tax breaks for big business that had been shoehorned into the bill by Republicans?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Republicans may be hypocrites in any number of areas, but this is not one of them. Republicans, including the one linked by Crowley, have no problem with filibusters against laws. Those happen all the time and are part of the system. They do have a problem with filibustering up or down votes on judicial nominees, which had never been done until the George W. Bush presidency.
Wait until a Democrat is president and the Republican minority in the Senate filibuster to stop his or her appointees, then call them hypocrites. Or, better yet, avoid the hypocrisy charge altogether, because it's beneath just about everything else you do here.
Oh I don't agree at all. I think it is rather selective for one party to try to determine when filibustering is and is not ok -- is one outlined clearly in the Constitution and the other not?
And why on earth avoid charges of hypocrisy against either party when the hypocrisy usually follows on the heels of political accusations coming from one party to the other?
Oh, and as for "never before been done"? Abe Fortas says hello. So do Clinton nominees Richard A. Paez and Marsha L. Berzon. Oh and H. Lee Sarokin, another Clinton judicial nominee. But sure -- filibustering up or down votes on nominees had not happened until the Bush administration except when it happened under the Clinton and before that Johnson administrations (Historical note: The Johnson administration ended 38 years ago. Never before indeed.). So yeah, never before other than those times before when Republicans filibustered Democratic judicial nominees.
dcat
Mea Culpa on the "never been done" issue, especially when it comes to Abe Fortas, who was filibustered by a combination of Republicans and Democrats. (I'm not sure why, either, he probably would have been denied anyway.)
Outside of that bizarre case, it is an exaggeration to say that "Republicans" filibustered the Clinton nominees when the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for cloture. Bill Frist, among others, was hypocritical on this issue, but I don't think anyone will do well if we judge an entire party on the actions of a small minority of its members.
In any case, I'm against filibustering judicial nominees who make it out of committee because it goes against a tradition of fair play. I believe that such traditions are important, and I think this particular tradition is helpful in preventing unnecessary animosity between the parties, and I think it would be a waste if we had to amend the constitution or change Senate rules to preserve that tradition.
With the exception of Fortas, both parties as parties did not use the filibuster to oppose judicial nominees until this administration, I suspect because of the tradition I'm talking about. In any case, Republicans clearly did not make it up in the last eight years, because Democrats followed it too. On the other hand, never has either party said the filibuster is off-limits in opposing laws.
The hypocrisy charge does not stick in this case.
Besides, it is almost never useful for convincing anyone of anything, and that is why it's beneath smart people with good ideas, which is what you are.
Agree to disagree.
dcat
A whale's vagina.
Well, no one actually knows the real meaning.
Great Odin's Raven, that got out of hand fast.
It really jumped up a notch, didn't it?
Yeah. Rich killed a guy.
You know the thing about tridents?
60% of the time they work all of the time.
Post a Comment