Beyond Hypocrisy

The word “hypocrisy” doesn’t begin to describe what the Republican Senate and White House are up to these days with respect to judicial appointments. They claim that all the president’s nominees deserve, in Dick Cheney’s words, “an up-or-down vote,” that “there is no justification for allowing the blocking of nominees” for ideological reasons, and that Democratic obstructionist “tactics of the last few years … are inexcusable.”

“Hypocrisy” is a poor designation because all politicians are hypocritical at times. And generally some minor distinction in differing positions on like subjects can be found to justify backtracking and mealy-mouthed double-dealing.

But contemporary Republican hypocrisy makes the word pale in its significance, for the GOP has reached down into the lowest, yet-unexplored depths of political debauchery and redefined the very essence of hypocrisy. It has discarded even the pretense of consistency and hairsplitting distinctions, instead choosing to simply write off its own solid history of judicial-appointee obstructionism as a kind of negligible non-history. For the party and its supporters the inconsistent past just doesn’t count – it is hereby expunged.

But it can’t be expunged for the consistently curious, because the past has a stubborn habit of recording itself and sticking around in print. And as a public service to those of that curious bent, I thought I’d replay some of that stubbornness in print:

From the St. Petersburg Times, April 14, 1994: “Republicans had been threatening to hold up the nomination [of a federal court nominee] indefinitely.”

From the New York Times, December 9, 1994: Senator Orrin Hatch, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Clinton administration “officials that he was now the principal gatekeeper on who gets to be a federal judge.”

From the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 12, 1997: “Any Clinton administration nominee who harbors ideas that don’t measure up on the GOP litmus test will have a tough time getting by [the Republican Senate’s] checkpoints.”

From the New York Times, January 2, 1998: “Mr. Hatch and his fellow Congressional Republicans … have delayed consideration of many of President Clinton’s nominees.”

From the St. Petersburg Times, September 26, 1999: “From virtually the beginning of Clinton's presidency, [Republicans] have blocked, stalled and shut down judicial confirmations in an attempt to keep jurists with the slightest liberal bent off the bench. Of the 62 judicial nominations put up by Clinton this year, the Senate has voted to confirm only 17.”

From the San Diego Union-Tribune, January 22, 2000: “Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., [said] that he and at least 13 other Republicans will block confirmation votes on every judicial nominee sent to the Senate by President Clinton in his last year in office.”

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 11, 2000: “Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott pushed through the confirmation of two federal judges Thursday, defying an effort by his fellow Republicans to block all nominations submitted by the Clinton administration.”

From the San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 2000: “Confirmation votes [on two nominees] had been delayed for years by conservative Republican senators who charged [they] were liberal activists named to a federal appeals court that already leans too far to the left. [One nominee] had to wait four years before yesterday's vote, the longest delay in history for any federal judicial nominee.”

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 28, 2000: “Clinton said that he had been trying to get a black judge on [the 4th U.S. Circuit Court] for the last five years but that he had been stopped by the Senate Republican majority.”

OK, review over. Update time again. The White House and Republican Senate now foam with high indignation that judicial nominees deserve “an up-or-down vote” and its denial is “inexcusable.”

That’s more than hypocritical. It’s sick.

Comments

[J W Kuruc]

Yup... that's how the pink supremacist boyz do it. Have for the past 4500 yrs; guess they always will till somebody makes 'em do their own laundry, etc. As the centuries roll on by, the brats always work the same methods & playbook to get their way. Lying is standard/required. Oh... & lossa violence.

[ThePen]

NO MEANS NO ON REJECTED JUDGES

Anybody out there want to actually take some ACTION on this? Here is a one click page that sends your personal message directly to all your members of Congress at once with a single click:

http://www.usalone.com/filibuster.htm

There is a fringe group in America who has a vision of our government as a
dictatorship, without any of the checks and balances our founders had the
wisdom to create over 200 years ago. And the most cynical part is that it
has NOTHING to do with people of faith. This is all about people either too
biased or too corrupt to be trusted with lifetime appointments to our
federal courts, including a judge lacking even the ethics to recuse herself
in cases involving her own campaign contributors.

The filibuster exists precisely to protect the minority from being abused by
a bare majority. This all the more important where the TRUE majority of our
people are OPPOSED to the radical and dangerous agenda being pushed by the
current administration. Those who would seek to usurp all power in our
country know they can never win over the American people on the merits. Not
satisfied with a court system already stacked with their own nominees, they
are obsessed with breaking the rules to lurch even further to the right.
They MUST be stopped NOW.

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Did they not hear us the first time we told them a small number of
their proposed nominees were TOTALLY unacceptable? Do they have to hear
from each and every one of us in person for them to get the message. Well,
maybe they do. And that's why it is so important for all of us speak out
now by submitting the form above and tell them once and for all that no
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Please post this message everywhere you can to everyone you know.