March 17, 2005
By Editorial
Investor's Business Daily
Politics: Democrats want to use the filibuster to torpedo some of President Bush's judicial nominees. Republicans want to end that practice. They're right to do so.
We share their frustration with the Democrats' failure to give Bush's nominees an up-or-down vote, based not on their fitness, character or legal qualifications, but on ideology, pure and simple.
The president has resubmitted 10 names to become judges on the federal court. All are highly qualified. All were blocked in the last Congress by Democrats, who refused to let their names come to the Senate floor for a vote. Today, Ninth Circuit Judge William Myers becomes the first of those names to get another chance.
An outstanding jurist, he deserves a vote not a filibuster.
The Constitution provides that the president name people to the federal bench, and that Congress' role is to "advise and consent." Nowhere does it say that a minority party should be able to thwart the will of the majority.
Indeed, the filibuster emerged from the Senate's own rules. It's an institutional arrangement, not a legal one. As such, it can be changed and frequently has been. Under Senate rules, the Republican majority can circumvent a filibuster making it possible for Bush's nominees to go to the floor for a yea-or-nay vote.
This has problems, we know. We'd prefer an outright rule change ending the filibuster to the use of obscure rules to get around it what the Democrats melodramatically call "the nuclear option."
And even if it wins, the GOP may find success a two-edged sword. Weakening the filibuster may seem like a good idea now. But will the GOP be so keen on it when a future Democratic president starts putting extremists on the bench? We doubt it.
Democrats say they're only speaking up for the "rights of the minority." But those rights don't include vetoing judicial nominees like one minority they didn't stand up for: Miguel Estrada, who eventually withdrew after being filibustered in 2003.
We pay senators to do a job vote up or down on nominees, and not play games. Yet, in a display of utter insincerity, two leading Democrats Minority Leader Harry Reid and West Virginia's Robert Byrd plan to twist the rules to slow the Senate to a crawl if the filibuster is taken away from them.
They would do well to remember that what goes around, comes around. Distaste for judicial obstruction was key in many 2004 senatorial elections around the country, and a big reason why the GOP gained four seats.
This week, a poll by the Judicial Confirmation Network found that 82% of Americans think "well-qualified" nominees deserve a vote on the Senate floor. Democrats might want to think about that before voters start wondering who among them is qualified.
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