Did you realize that the filibuster is not provided for in our Constitution? And the GOP is making a total perversion of it!

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Enough! GOP Once Again Proves Too Irresponsible To Handle The Filibuster
By Rick Ungar, October 31, 2013

What does a political party do when they are badly in need of expanding their base to include women and minorities?

I’m fairly sure that exercising its right to filibuster the nominees of a president—one a highly respected woman nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and one a highly respected and well liked African American Congressman nominated to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency—would not be at the top of the list of recommend behavior.

Yet, this is precisely what the Senate Republicans did today.

What makes the blocking of these nominees so remarkable is that there is no shortage of support when it comes to the quality of the nominees among the very GOP Senators that voted to deny the Senate the opportunity to vote up or down on their nomination. Rather, the Republicans’ problem is with the president and the reality that a Democratic appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will give Democrats a majority on that important judicial body.

Patricia Ann Millet is the Obama nominee to join the US Court of Appeals.

When Ms. Millet appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the committee charged with investigating and considering her nomination, not so much as one Republican Senator on the panel had a concern with or so much as a bad word to say about Millet’s qualifications.

Indeed, Ms. Millet was described by none other than Senator Ted Cruz as possessing “very fine professional qualifications.”

Yet, when the matter came to a cloture vote, the Democrats were unable to succeed in rounding up 60 votes and Ms. Millet’s nomination was blocked by a filibuster of the Senate Republicans.

The use of the filibuster to deny Millet’s nomination is but one more example of the Republicans simply refusing to recognize and accept that Barack Obama won the 2012 election and, having done so, gets to appoint people to fill vacancies in the federal court system.

You know, just like the Republican president who was able to appoint a few Justices to the United States Supreme Court, handing conservatives the majority vote in that body.

Currently, there are three vacancies on the DC Circuit Court which is generally regarded as the second most influential court in the nation following the Supreme Court. With the makeup of the DC Circuit Court currently split evenly between conservative appointees and liberal appointees, Senate GOPers cannot bring themselves to approve the nomination of someone they have deemed eminently competent for the job as to do so would give the appointees of Democratic presidents the edge in the vote count—although history confirms that one never knows how a judge will vote once they are seated on the bench.

While I understand that conservatives would prefer not to see the balance tip in favor of more liberal judges on so important a court—just as liberals squirmed as President Bush appointed hard-line conservatives to SCOTUS—anyone who would support this type of Senate behavior has completely rejected one of the most fundamental of Constitutional directives. While the Senate’s [sic] possesses the right to advice [sic] and consent on presidential nominees, that obligation was created to insure that high quality candidates with proper qualifications would fill these important roles.

Note that the filibuster is not provided for in our Constitution. The Founders intended that the Senate would take a vote on nominees and the majority would carry the day.

The vote on Ms. Millet’s nomination in the full Senate was 55-38 in favor of bringing the nominate to the floor for a full vote where Ms. Millet is expected to easily achieve confirmation. This vote included all of the Democrats voting for cloture along two Republicans who also voted to bring up the nomination while three Republicans dogged it and voted  “present”.

Yes, I get the irony of the GOP Senators voting ‘present’ after hammering the President for doing the same during his term in the Illinois legislature.

Remarkably, the Senate GOP leadership is not even pretending they have personal or competency issues with Ms. Millet as a candidate.

Said Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell—

“Our Democratic colleagues and the administration’s supporters have been actually pretty candid. They’ve admitted they want to control the court so it will advance the president’s agenda.”

What a shocker! A Democratic president wants to appoint someone to the court who shares his point of view. Who would have thought such a thing would be possible here in America—excepting, of course, every single American President who has ever made his own appointments to the federal bench.

The mere fact that Minority Leader McConnell could make such a comment with a straight face should provide ample evidence of the fact that the filibuster does not belong in the hands of a party that would so abuse both the privilege and their constitutional obligations.

For those senators who justify their actions by claiming that they owe deference to the President when it comes to approving the appointment of cabinet members and other executive branch roles but believe more scrutiny should be exercised when it comes to judges appointed to lifetime terms, one wonders how they explain their filibustering of Congressman Melvin Watts to become the head of Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The refusal to confirm Watts is particularly remarkable when considering that a sitting member of Congress appointed by a President to an executive position has not failed to be confirmed since before the American Civil War.

Mr. Watt’s personal competency, temperament or character has never been questioned by Republicans who oppose his nomination.

Instead, Republican opponents have suggested that they are displeased that Obama appointed a politician for the job. In other words, the senators who are opposed to Rep. Watts on this basis are saying that they wouldn’t even vote for themselves if appointed.

Anyone believe that?

Of course, this might be their best argument given that these Republican politicians likely have special insight into how they are each unfit to hold a position of responsibility.

Some GOPers have suggested that the office to which Mr. Watts has been chosen—one that oversees two rather complex financial institutions—would be better run by a “technocrat”.

That’s a tough argument to make considering that the President’s first nominee for this job back in 2010 —Joseph A. Smith, Jr. the North Carolina banking commissioner—was such a technocrat. Still, there was so much objection to Smith’s nomination by Republicans that Smith eventually chose to withdraw from consideration.

The time has come for the Democratic majority in the Senate to revise the rule and change when and how the filibuster can be used. While I would not recommend complete destruction of the device, it seems clear that it must be modified to bar the use of the filibuster when it comes to Presidential nominees.

As for those who argue that this could ‘backfire’ on Democrats should the GOP gain control of the Senate, I have no problem with this whatsoever. When it comes to presidential appointees—even if that president is a Republican—there ought to be some specific problem with the candidate if the nominee is to be rejected. It cannot be about one party in the Senate or the other getting to deny a presidential appointment because it may shift the balance on a particular federal court.

If a candidate is unfit for the office—think Harriet Meyers—then the Senate should reject that candidate. But if it [is] simply a matter of denying a highly qualified position because the opposition party doesn’t want anyone but someone sympathetic to their own beliefs, that is just not the way things were intended to operate and represents a total perversion of the American system of government.
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