It constantly amazes me how the well-oiled Republican spin machine works to blast Democrats over strategies and events that they themselves have used in the past – and the Democrats aren’t organized enough to blast back. Here’s an amusing letter in today’s Washington Post about the Estrada battle:
George F. Will says the Senate Democrats’ filibuster to kill President Bush’s nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is a constitutional coup. Mr. Will’s complaint is that it will take 60 or more senators (the number needed to end a filibuster), a supermajority, to approve judicial appointments.
Turning the math around, Mr. Will is saying that 41 senators can thwart the will of the majority and of the president. That may be the case, but the situation is worse than he suggested.
Under Senate rules, one senator can file an objection to a nominee from his or her state, even if that nominee would be overwhelmingly approved in the Senate. A case in point was the nomination by President Clinton of Ronnie White, a Missouri state Supreme Court judge, to a federal district court. Then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R.-Mo.) objected to the nomination and persuaded his fellow Missouri Sen. Christopher S. Bond to go along, and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Judge White down.
I don’t recall Mr. Will complaining about the power of a single senator in this case.
MARK E. RUSHEFSKY
Springfield, Mo.
Just remember: the right took every opportunity to bring down Bill Clinton over such things as a sexual rendezvous, even though he was a good president. George Bush is an alcoholic and former drug user, and a bad president. And yet you don’t see constant reports on news channels about his past bad behavior. The left doesn’t mention it. Why is that? Because he’s popular? C’mon, what do you have to lose? Let him have it! It’s time that the left got a backbone and begins to defend itself – and point out the hypocrisy of the right.
