Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has spent the better part of the last two years insisting that the Senate has never tolerated a minority of the chamber to filibuster a president’s judicial nominees. To hear him tell it, the very idea flouts constitutional principles, ignores the Founding Fathers, and undermines the judicial process.
Dems have a variety of persuasive retorts to Frist’s transparent nonsense, but the most compelling has to be the one the Center for American Progress highlighted yesterday: Bill Frist supported filibustering Clinton’s judicial nominees.
Documents obtained by American Progress show Frist participated in an effort to block one of Bill Clinton’s judicial nominees via filibuster, then lied about it.
In recent weeks, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been relentlessly preaching about the evils of judicial filibusters. Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 12, Frist said filibustering judicial nominees is “radical. It is dangerous and it must be overcome.” Frist called judicial filibusters “nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority.” When Bill Clinton was President, however, Frist engaged in the same behavior he is now condemning.
In 1996 Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Conservatives in Congress held up Paez’s nomination for more than four years, culminating in an attempted filibuster on March 8, 2000. Bill Frist was among those who voted to filibuster Paez.
Frist was directly confronted with this vote by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation (11/21/04). Schieffer said “Senator, a group called The American Progress Action Fund sent me a question to ask you. And here’s what it says: ‘Senator Frist, if you oppose the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations, why did you vote to filibuster Judge Richard Paez when President Clinton nominated him to the 9th Circuit?'” Frist replied “Filibuster, cloture, it gets confusing–as a scheduling or to get more information is legitimate. But no to kill nominees.”
But American Progress has obtained a document that proves Frist was not, as he suggested, voting to filibuster Paez for scheduling purposes or to get more information. He voted to filibuster Paez for the very reason he said was illegitimate — to block Paez’s nomination indefinitely.
On March 9, 2000, Former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) issued a press release describing the intent of the Paez filibuster vote the day before. The release says Senator Smith “built a coalition of several moderate and conservative Senators in an effort to block” Paez’s nomination. Frist was a part of that coalition. Smith did not organize the filibuster to get more information on Paez (after all his nomination had been pending for four years). He organized the filibuster because he had already decided Paez was “out of the mainstream of political though and…should [not] be on the court.”
So, Frist is not only deceiving people by insisting that judicial filibusters are unprecedented, he’s also an obvious hypocrite. When Dems do it, they’re destroying the Senate. When he does the exact same thing, he’s well within his rights as a senator.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the CAP revelation seems like the kind of tool that should seriously undermine Frist’s efforts to permanently change the filibuster rules. When Frist says the Dems’ tactics are dangerous, Dems will say, “You did the same thing.” When Frist says the filibusters are unconstitutional, Dems will say, “You did the same thing.” When Frist says no Senate has ever tolerated judicial filibusters, Dems will say, “You did the same thing.”
There are a handful of Republicans who are still uncomfortable with the idea of the “nuclear option” and its consequences. This revelation should help remind them that Dems won’t be in the minority forever and Republicans may want to use some of the same tactics in the future that they’ve utilized in the past.