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Virginia’s
two U.S. Senators split last week over how to deal
with the tactics of Senate Democrats who have
blocked confirmation votes on several judicial
nominations for years.
John
Warner was a central player in the process leading
to an agreement among 14 senators to avert a vote to
end Senate filibusters of judicial nominations.
George Allen sharply criticized the agreement,
calling it “a major disappointment on
principle.”
The
different positions of the two Virginians should not
have come as a surprise. Allen has been an outspoken
opponent of the Democrats’ obstructionist tactics.
In fact, as Chairman of the Republican Senatorial
Campaign Committee during the 2004 campaigns, he
raised funds to defeat former Senate Democratic
Leader Tom Daschle principally because of
Daschle’s role in spearheading such obstructionist
tactics during the first term of President George W.
Bush.
Warner,
on the other hand, has cultivated a reputation for
independence. He has frequently broken with his own
party, perhaps most notably when he voted in 1987
against President Reagan’s nomination of Judge
Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The
difference between Allen and Warner over the
filibuster issue is likely to have an effect on
politics beyond the current battle over judges, and
beyond the Senate itself. The showdown between the
Republicans and the Democrats over the latters’
unprecedented use of the filibuster was a defining
moment, even though it did not result in what the
national media predicted would be a meltdown.
The
media have not covered themselves with honor in
their treatment of this fight. When then-Speaker
Newt Gingrich led House Republicans to shut
government down in a 1995 budget confrontation with
President Clinton, the media labeled the Republicans
irresponsible. Yet, when Senate Democrats continued
their four-year-long blockade of Bush judicial
nominations by abusing Senate rules and threatening
a virtual shutdown of the Senate if the GOP majority
changed the rules to avert the blockade, the media
treated them as principled heroes.
What
Warner ignored and Allen recognized is that a
vitally important principle of governance is at
stake. Ultimately, the people must believe
that they are in control of their government.
That
includes the judicial department. When election
campaigns are waged on the issue of the federal
judiciary and the kind of judges who will be
nominated to serve, the voters have a right to
expect the outcome of the election to have a direct
bearing on the makeup of the judiciary.
Allen
was prepared to fight for that principle. Warner,
for his part, was more concerned about his club —
the U.S. Senate — and how its members should get
along than he was about the subversion of the will
of the electorate by the Democratic minority in that
body.
This
was a fight worth having. A high-profile clash over
the Democrats’ insistence that a judicial
nomination should require a vote of 60 members out
of 100 whenever the Democrats decided to invoke that
requirement would have allowed the people to see
beyond the misleading political commentary and the
Democrats’ television ads.
Sen.
Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., intoned that the agreement he
and Warner negotiated saved the Republic. To the
contrary, the Republic cannot long survive if the
will of the people is frustrated. The Founders
rejected raw majoritarian rule, but they fully
understood that a revolution had just been waged
over the principle of popular control of government.
--
June 6, 2005
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