Burnt Orange Report

Washington Republicans Resorting to Texas Style Partisanship

By Byron LaMasters

Wait. I got that backwards, right? Wrong.

In a year when congressional Republicans have piled up a string of victories on issues from tax cuts to war in Iraq, Democrats can point to one enduring triumph: a hard-nosed filibuster against four of President Bush's judicial nominees.

Now, with the presidential race hitting stride and the number of delayed nominees sure to rise, frustrated Senate Republicans say they are finally ready to act, perhaps explosively.

This week, Republicans say, Congress will behold a vengeful party. Republicans have scheduled 30 hours of continuous debate on judges to begin Wednesday afternoon, producing a rare all-night Senate session. Frequent attempts to force votes will punctuate the barrage of speeches, and both sides threaten to dig deep into their bags of parliamentary tricks.

Friday will bring a vote to try to break the filibuster against Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, whose nomination has been delayed for seven months, as well as votes on two new nominees likely to be met with additional filibusters.

Democrats dismiss the GOP salvo as more show than showdown, pointing out that they helped approve 168 Bush-nominated judges while delaying a handful of nominees they consider conservative activists who lack judicial temperament.

Republicans say they are ready for all-out war.

"We're trying to increase the visibility of this problem by slowly escalating our tactics," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a Judiciary Committee member who will play a leading role in the debate.

Underlining the rising stakes, if not Republican wrath, is growing talk of limiting the filibuster, one of the Senate's most cherished tactics, so Bush can nominate conservative judges without effective opposition.

The strategy is so divisive that Capitol insiders call it the "nuclear option."

"It would cause a volcano in the Senate. It would destroy the remaining vestiges of bipartisanship necessary to running the Senate," said Larry Sabato, a leading authority on Congress and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Under current rules, the 51 Republican senators set the chamber's agenda. but because it takes 60 votes to end debate, they need Democrats to move legislation and nominees. Without nine crossover Democrats, the debate never officially ends -- the equivalent of a filibuster without the hours of droning floor speeches.

The potential nuclear option has echoes of the Texas redistricting fight this summer when Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst overrode Democratic opposition by abandoning a Texas Senate tradition that required two-thirds of the state senators to agree before a bill could be debated. That prompted 11 Democratic legislators to flee to New Mexico to deny the Texas Senate a quorum for a few weeks.

With the U.S. Senate, Sabato doubts the GOP will go nuclear because the Democratic backlash could paralyze the Senate.

Exactly. There was once a time where Texas legislators prided themselves in how Austin was the antithesis of Washington. Leaders (largely conservatives) like Bob Bullock, Bill Ratliff, Pete Laney, Ben Barnes, Bill Hobby and heck, even George W. Bush (when he was governor) all brought together legislators across partisan lines to get things accomplished, for better or worse. Now, Republicans in Washington D.C. look to Texas Republicans as a model of how to employ the most extreme partisan tactics and rule bending:

But with Republicans unable to deliver Bush's full slate of federal judges, influential Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has become a vocal proponent of banning filibusters on judicial nom- inees. It's the only way "we can force a change here," he said.

[...]

Republicans don't expect their 30-hour blitz to break any filibusters, though they hold out slim hopes of catching Democrats napping, either literally or procedurally.

"We're not doing this just for show. We're doing it to try to produce votes during that period of time, in the wee hours of the morning if necessary, to get votes on these nominees," Santorum said.

[...]

"If Republicans want to lose their advantage and eliminate their opportunity to call Democrats obstructionist, then just go ahead and use the nuclear option.

"I guarantee it will be played nationally that Republicans are, once again, getting more than the rules allow them, like Florida (the 2000 presidential recount), Texas with redistricting and California (with the governor's recall)," Sabato said.

It may be worth watching Republicans try to change the senate filibuster rules (as they did in the Texas Senate) just so the nation can witness the extremes to which Republicans will go to impliment their agenda. I'm willing to let a few extreme conservative activist judges slip through if it will wake up Americans to the redistricting / recall / recount / rule-changing tactics used by the Republican Party. Regardless, I'll have to turn to C-SPAN later this week. It should make for some interesting drama.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at November 9, 2003 03:02 PM | TrackBack