The American Spectator : Sotomayor Matters

Text Size

Sotomayor Matters

By Quin Hillyer on 7.16.09 @ 6:08AM

Why are moderate Democrats not under fire?

(Page 2 of 2)

How could they actually win this fight? First, by actually fighting.

Again, if they put the pressure on the Democratic senators, they can make the Dems squirm. Break one of them -- force one to announce they will vote against her -- and the floodgates could open.

Conduct a full debate. Respectfully drag out the process. Be willing to temporarily filibuster the nomination. Again, they should make clear it is temporary. They should say they are willing to move to a final vote, but only after giving themselves enough time to see if they can change enough Democratic minds to win the final vote.

To uphold a temporary filibuster -- which ought to be a test of party loyalty just as much as any rules fight -- all the GOP Senate caucus needs to do is hold all their members and either pick off one Democrat for one cloture vote, or force a vote when Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd or some other Democrat isn't there. This would be an unfair tactic if the goal were to permanently kill the nomination by filibuster. But if the goal is just to extend debate a little longer so that they American people can have the chance to really take it all in, then it's a perfectly legitimate way to conduct business. Nobody should take advantage of somebody else's frailty to force a lasting decision on the American polity. But nobody should be averse to insisting on minority procedural rights if the goal is real, honest, timely debate, with a definite end, in order to help educate that same polity.

Even now, with the hearings off to a decent but not totally effective start, Republican senators can turn the tide on this nomination if they just apply themselves fully and intelligently to the task.

And that's what they, every one of them, should do -- and what honest, moderate Democrats should do as well, because nobody with Sotomayor's record should get within sniffing distance of the highest court in the land.

This is not, in the end, a matter of political posturing. It -- the larger issue of what a judge's role is and of what the Constitution actually means -- is a matter of national survival.

And it is the moderate Democrats who should be put on the spot about why they are so blithely putting that survival at risk.

Page: < 12

topics:
Democratic Party, Republicans, Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Senate

About the Author

Quin Hillyer is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (30) | Leave a comment

Siegfried X| 7.16.09 @ 6:53AM

This is all true, yet the opposite is happening: the Democrats are strongly united behind Soto, while many Republicans have already thrown in the towel. At least half of the Republican Senators are likely to vote to confirm Sotomayor.

Why? Answering this question, and then fixing the problem is the most important job for the Republican party. If Republicans become just a wing of the Democratic Party, then all is lost.

Robert Rosencrans| 7.16.09 @ 8:28AM

Who let someone with brains like you anywhere near a keyboard? This is prohibited inside the beltway.

grn_beret| 7.16.09 @ 8:50AM

There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat- they are all socialist and blind to the needs of America.

ncatty| 7.16.09 @ 9:31AM

Third-party time.

dcd| 7.16.09 @ 10:08AM

I think a "temporary" filibuster is a great idea, it will be hilarious. The democrats can then try to enact the constitutional, aka nuclear, option. The parties won't even have to come up with new arguments or press releases supporting respective positions, they can just swap notes from last time. Since all senators look pretty much the same the media can just recycle footage and swap a couple names around.

Bill Husserin O'Stalin| 7.16.09 @ 10:32AM

DCD has come up with a brilliant idea. The U.S. Congress should be forced to recycle themselves by usage of old video footage, thereby saving the taxpayers billions in expenses.

Old Texican| 7.16.09 @ 10:59AM

Quinn Thank you again.

One particular phrase you used stuck in my mind: "consent of the governed".
The tyrants in DC no longer have my consent!

Oldefarte| 7.16.09 @ 12:48PM

Quin, I hope and pray that your suggestions become reality, but I'm not very confident. Again, I think REPLACEMENT of these incumbent Republicans is the only answer!!!!!!

Carpenter| 7.16.09 @ 1:05PM

As he so often does, Siegfried X misses the point. Blue dog dems are vulnerable to pressure to vote against, and their votes to confirm will haunt them in 2010. Nice for him to be the confidant of so many Republican senators, though.

Ncatty: third parties are a gift for the Dems: that what you're after?

Old Texican| 7.16.09 @ 1:19PM

I helped elect Bill Clinton...I voted for Ross Perot.

I apologise ...a lot.
NO THIRD PARTY!
(fastest way I know to provoke a total communist takeover.)

Marc Jeric| 7.16.09 @ 2:40PM

High time for the Republican wimps to take courses in borking and high-tech lynching from the professors Kennedy ands Biden. To allow the murderers on death row to vote since the majority of them are black and Mexican Indians - what a concept! it is clearly in Sotomayor's opinion of racial discrimination. A good sign of that pig-faced racist's (with lipstick) intelectual probity!

ncatty| 7.16.09 @ 2:57PM

The GOP was a third party in 1856.

Tim| 7.16.09 @ 4:04PM

"I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves." (Gulliver's Travels Part IV, Chapter V)

Old Texican| 7.16.09 @ 7:02PM

Ncatty
Yeah they were a successful third party. Do you happen to recall the result?
UH........
Well we in Texas call it the war of northern aggression.
Yes, we can go there...............but this time the south and west have all the fuel.
Don't matter!
Lots of American dead for no purpose.

Please...get your head out of your arse and help us stop this abomination short of all out civil war.

Electric bicycles| 7.17.09 @ 3:29AM

I helped elect Bill Clinton...I voted for Ross Perot.

Electric bikes

Siegfried X| 7.17.09 @ 10:10AM

Republican Senator Lugar just announced that he will vote for Sotomayor. He is the first of many, unfortunately. She will get 80 to 90 votes, proving there is little difference between the two parties.