George Will’s selectively applied principles

While George Will’s “analysis” of current events is generally useless, Carpetbagger’s brilliant friend Michael pointed to Will’s latest essay as intriguing.

Will follows the talking points sent to him from the White House to use his column to condemn Senate Democrats for holding up Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. While Carpetbagger has already commented on Bush’s rather weak arguments in admonishing Senate Dems, Will takes the rhetoric to new heights, or in this case, depths.

The bow-tied one argues today that if Democrats succeed in blocking Estrada’s nomination, “the Constitution effectively will be amended.” Will goes on to say, “By…nullifying the president’s power to shape the judiciary, the Democratic Party will wield a presidential power without having won a presidential election.” (Well, our guy did get more votes than their guy, but that’s another story for another day.)

Will’s argument is practically too sad to rebuke, but simply put, the Senate allows members to filibuster at their leisure. The Constitution requires Senators to give their blessing to the president’s judicial nominees, and Democrats are blocking this nomination. This isn’t the first nominee to get this treatment, and hopefully, it won’t be the last. Republicans have used similar tactics countless times and the Constitution remains in tact.

In fact, come to think of it, Senate Republicans used identical tactics throughout the Clinton administration, blocking legislation and nominees as frequently as possible. As Carpetbagger wrote earlier this week, Senate Republicans, led by Orrin Hatch, intentionally blocked most of Clinton’s judicial nominees for several years in an attempt to run out the clock on his administration and get a slew of right-wing nominees to the federal bench from Clinton’s successor.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to see what our friend Mr. Will said about those tactics at the time, to see if he accused the GOP of effectively trying to “amend” the Constitution. Hmm, can’t seem to find anything; perhaps the cat had his tongue.

There was a 1995 column in which Will smeared Peter Edelman, Clinton’s nominee for a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as soft on crime and gave his blessing to Senate Republicans blocking the nomination. Can’t seem to find any remarks about the GOP trying to “wield a presidential power without having won a presidential election.”

Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. Oh, here’s an interesting one. It seems Will was thrilled that Senate Republicans blocked Bill Lan Lee, Clinton’s nominee to be assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1996. As Will described it, the GOP was fully justified in using petty partisan politics to filibuster the nomination. “A deeply satisfying and entirely valid reason for rejecting the nomination is pay-back,” George Will wrote at the time.

Finally, a point from Will I can agree with. Deeply satisfying indeed.