Filibuster Hypocrisy
Don’t you just love it when the left highlights supposed Republican hypocrisy and holds the GOP to standards that no Democrat could meet, even if they wanted to?
For instance, The Agitator, a libertarian and not a leftist, points to a column by WaPo’s Dana Millbank on the Senate Republicans use of the filibuster to oppose The Obama’s court nominee David Hamilton:
Dana Milbank plays gotcha with GOP senators on the filibuster. Surprise! Their feelings on the parliamentary maneuver are largely dependent on who’s in power. He starts with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose leading the filibuster against U.S. District Judge David Hamilton, Obama’s first appellate court nominee.
For much of this decade, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, now the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, led the fight against Democratic filibusters of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. He decried Democrats’ “unprecedented, obstructive tactics.” To have Bush nominees “opposed on a partisan filibuster, it is really wrong,” he added. He demanded they get “an up-and-down vote.” He praised Republican leaders because they “opposed judicial filibusters” and have “been consistent on this issue even when it was not to their political benefit to do so.”
So now a Democratic president is in the White House and he has nominated his first appellate judicial nominee, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton. And what did Sessions do? He went to the floor and led a filibuster.
“I opposed filibusters before,” the Alabaman said with his trademark twang. But in this case, he went on, “I don’t agree with his judicial philosophy. Therefore, I believe this side cannot acquiesce into a philosophy that says that Democratic presidents can get their judges confirmed with 50 votes.”
There you have it, Republicans are such big fat hypocrites. Since they opposed Democrat filibusters during a Republican administration, they should oppose them under a Democrat.
Not all Republicans senators were inconsistent. Just the vast majority of them. For not even attempting to explain away their hacktasticness, the GOPers get a 9.5 out of 10 on the completely arbitrary Hackery Index.
This theme gets repeated over and over. The Democrats block Republican judicial appointments for nearly a decade. Democrats use parliamentary games to block Republican legislative initiatives. Democrats will not allow a Republican president to chose his own court picks, cabinet and regulatory appointees unless they toe the liberal line.
Republicans believe in letting a president have his way those appointments. The Democrats do not. Period.
So, Republicans are hypocrites when they employ the Democrats’ standard.
I call bullshit. Fair play is always a one-way street with these people. Republicans are supposed to adhere to a higher standard while the Democrats get away with murder.
Bullshit.
It is not hypocrisy to use your political enemies tools to defeat them, but it’s foolish to allow them to set an ethical standard that they themselves refuse to meet.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.