DISPATCHES: Filibustering democracy: a failure of leadership

DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet The Senate needs to expand democracy through reform.

   The argument is incredibly esoteric, focused solely on the rules of one of the most bureaucratic legislative bodies in the Western world.
   And yet, the argument has resonance beyond the narrow confines of the Beltway, and not only because its resolution could determine whether the president’s judicial nominees will make their way to the federal bench.
   The rule is pretty basic. For a full floor vote to occur on legislation or nominees — judicial or otherwise — 60 U.S. senators must agree to end what is called a filibuster, or the unlimited debate allowed by the Senate. That means only 41 senators — or 41 percent — can block just about anything that makes its way past a Senate committee.
   Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, want to do away with the filibuster — at least when it comes to judicial nominees. The reason: 10 conservative nominees proposed by President George W. Bush have been blocked by Democrats who have used the threat of a filibuster to keep the nominees from going before the full Senate for a vote where confirmation was likely. (Republicans hold a majority in the Senate with 55 of the 100 seats; there are 44 Democrats and one independent.) Democrats have again threatened to use the filibuster to prevent the seating of the seven conservatives the president renominated earlier this year.


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   Sen. Frist has attempted to paint his attack on the Senate rule as a necessary reform that is in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution. The Senate has the responsibility to provide "advice and consent" on nominees to the judiciary, a responsibility that Sen. Frist says requires an up-or-down vote each time the president puts a nominee forward.
   He’s right. The filibuster is, as the self-professed "liberal Democrat" Timothy Noah wrote Friday on the online magazine Slate, a conservative instrument designed to thwart the will of the majority. The Los Angeles Times, in an editorial, echoes this: "The filibuster is a reactionary instrument that goes too far in empowering a minority of senators," the paper wrote Tuesday.
   But Sen. Frist is not concerned about reform. If he were, he’d be calling for a complete end to the filibuster, including those over legislation. He’s not and the reason has to do with the politics of political interest groups.
   "The filibuster debate is a stark reminder of the unprincipled and results-oriented nature of politics, as senators readily switch sides for tactical advantage," the L.A. Times wrote. Democrats, who just 10 years ago decried its use by the GOP to block President Bill Clinton’s nominees, are now its staunchest defenders, while the Republicans who used it so expertly during the 1990s are now its harshest critics.
   For the GOP, it’s all about the religious right. Just as Democrats have taken to defending an undemocratic Senate rule to please a segment of its so-called base (pro-choicers, for example), the GOP plans to use the "nuclear option" (Sen. Frist’s term for ending filibusters and one of the more noxious in political parlance) to get President Bush’s nominees to the floor to pay back the party’s evangelical wing.
   Sen. Frist’s appearance Sunday at The Family Research Council’s "Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith," during which he made a secular plea for "simple majority rules," is a case in point. Speakers assailed liberal special interests and accuse opponents of being against faith. Sen. Frist’s decision to speak via tape at the rally, even if his speech made no mention of religion, was calculated to play to the crowd; to show his solidarity with a Republican special interest that he will need if, as the Washington pundits are correct, he makes a bid for the presidency in 2008.
   Ending the filibuster, for him, is about the president’s judicial nominees and not about expanding democracy.
   There is a real need for reform of the Senate. It should not be limited to ending a practice with a history almost as long as the Senate’s itself — a sordid history that includes Southern Democrats’ use of the filibuster from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s to derail civil rights legislation. As part of the discussion of the filibuster, we should be talking about the undemocratic nature of the Senate itself — each state has the same number of senators even though states like Wyoming and Delaware have a fraction of the population of states like Texas, California and even New Jersey. So much for one man, one vote.
   So, by all means, end the filibuster and expand democracy. But do it for the right reasons. And don’t stop there.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].