Watch What you Do...........

The Democrats are still lamenting the failed nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal appellate bench. Here is the key paragraph from the latest article in the LA Times:

"How times have changed. In 2005, when Democrats balked at confirming some of then-President George W. Bush's judicial nominees, Senate Republicans widely declared that filibustering a judicial nominee violates the Constitution. Late last month, however, Senate Republicans embraced the tactic, almost unanimously joining a filibuster of professor Goodwin Liu's nomination to a federal appeals court. And sadly, it worked: Last week, Liu asked President Obama to withdraw his nomination."

So let's look at this. Did the Senate Republicans act in a hypocritical manner?

First, there is some need to correct the history recounted by the LA Times. In 2005, Senate Republicans did not claim that a fillibuster on judicial nominees violated the constitution. Rather they said that judicial nominees deserve an up or down vote and that a fillibuster violates the spirit of the constitution. The Senate Republicans then threatened to change the Senate rules so that fillibusters would no longer be permitted for nominations. That change was called the "nuclear option" because the Senate Democrats threatened to tie up the entire Senate for good if the rules change was enacted. At that point, fourteen senators got together and worked out a compromise. Votes would be allowed on particular nominees whose names were then before the Senate; other nominees would not be voted upon; and the right to fillibuster a nomination would remain. Both sides agreed, however, to use the fillibuster on a nomination sparingly. So, the 2005 compromise left the fillibuster in place.

Now let's look at the Liu nomination. Liu is the first judicial nominee offered by Obama who has faced a fillibuster. That is one in three years. In 2005, the Democrats were in the process of fillibustering eleven Bush nominees, and that was just at the time of the compromise. So the Republicans have used the filibuster sparingly.

The short summary is that the Republicans are doing exactly what was agreed to by the Senate Democrats in 2005. They fillibustered a highly political and radical leftist nominee to keep him off the bench. The only ones who are being hypocritical are the people who write articles like the one in the LA Times.