Changing their Minds...No, It's Hypocrisy

The New York Times editorializes against Republican proposals to eliminate the Senate filibuster, and points out how radically some GOPers' views on the practice have changed now that they are in the majority:

Judicial nominees have never been immune from filibusters. When Republicans opposed President Lyndon Johnson's choice for chief justice, Abe Fortas, they led a successful filibuster to stop him from getting the job. More recently, in the Clinton era, Republicans spoke out loudly in defense of their right to filibuster against the confirmation of cabinet members and judicial nominees. Republican senators, including Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio, used a filibuster in 1995 to block President Bill Clinton's nominee for surgeon general. Bill Frist, now the Senate majority leader, supported a filibuster of a Clinton appeals court nomination. Senator Christopher Bond, a Missouri Republican, was quoted in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1993 saying, "On important issues, I will not hesitate to join a filibuster."

Now that Republicans are doing the appointing, they see things very differently. Dr. Frist recently declared on "Fox News Sunday" that preventing votes on judicial nominees is "intolerable." Among the proposals Republicans are floating is the so-called nuclear option. According to Senate rules, changing the filibuster rule should require a two-thirds vote. But in the "nuclear option," Vice President Dick Cheney, as Senate president, would rule that filibusters of judicial nominees could be ended by a simple majority.

That said, I think it may be time for the Democrats to agree to be thrown into this brier patch. The filibuster is an anti-democratic procedure in what is already an anti-democratic institution (the Senate, with its bias toward small states). It's not a good thing. It isn't healthy for our Republic.

It might be time to agree with the Republicans on this one -- but we should expose their hypocrisy as we do it.