If you haven’t seen Orrin Hatch’s article in the National Review on Bush’s judicial nominees and Dem filibusters, you should definitely take a look. Kevin Drum accuses Hatch of using a “self-servingly selective memory.” If anything, that’s putting it mildly.
The entire diatribe is a lengthy mess, filled with contradictions, distortions, and errors of fact, but I thought I’d take a moment (or two) to highlight some of the more egregious problems.
“The filibusters used to block such votes have mired the judicial-confirmation process in a political and constitutional crisis that undermines democracy, the judiciary, the Senate, and the Constitution.”
There’s that “crisis” word again; Bush’s addiction to the word appears to be contagious.
Regardless, there is no crisis. The Senate confirmed over 200 of Bush’s judicial nominees in his first term, more than the first-term totals of each of the last three presidents. At this point, as Eugene Oregon noted, the vacancy rate on the federal bench is down to just 4%, half of what it was under Clinton and the lowest it’s been in 20 years. To call this is a “crisis that undermines democracy” is to be comically hyperbolic.
“Focusing on President Clinton’s judicial nominations in 1999, I described what has been the Senate’s historical standard for judicial nominations: ‘Let’s make our case if we have disagreement, and then vote.’ … They should not also be held in permanent filibuster limbo.”
That’s rich coming from Hatch. The fact is, Senate Republicans, led by Hatch, blocked more than 60 Clinton judicial nominees from even getting hearings, let alone votes. Hatch held several would-be judges in “permanent committee limbo” by simply ignoring calls for hearings and allowing the nominations to sit pending for literally years. In all, during the last six years of Clinton’s presidency, the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee blocked fully one-third of Clinton’s nominees to the federal appeals courts. Where was Hatch’s “crisis” then?
“Even on controversial nominees such as Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon, we invoked cloture to ensure that we would vote on confirmation.”
Patently false. As the Center for American Progress recently reported, Senate Republicans voted to filibuster Paez to block Paez’s nomination indefinitely — which is the same thing Senate Dems have done under Bush.
“Let me put my own record on the table. I have never voted against cloture on a judicial nomination. I opposed filibusters of Carter and Clinton judicial nominees, Reagan and Bush judicial nominees, all judicial nominees.”
There’s two things wrong with this. First, Hatch may not have personally filibustered, but he did block dozens of Clinton judicial nominees from receiving up-or-down votes. Second, there were filibusters for judicial nominees of Carter, Clinton, Reagan, and Bush? A few paragraphs earlier, Hatch was claiming the very idea of such filibusters is “unprecedented.”
The fact that Hatch would even take on the issue of blocking judicial nominees is pretty ridiculous. The shameless hypocrisy is breathtaking.
As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Hatch abandoned every rule that Democrats followed, then created new ones as he went along. After the blue-slip rule allowed two senators from a nominee’s home state to block the nomination, for example, Hatch decided he’d no longer enforce the rule.
* In 1998, for no special reason, Orrin Hatch decided that only one senator needed to object to a nomination. This made it easier for Republicans to obstruct Bill Clinton’s nominees.
* In 2001, when one of their own became president, Hatch suddenly reversed course and decided that it should take two objections after all. That made it harder for Democrats to obstruct George Bush’s nominees.
* In early 2003, Hatch went even further: senatorial objections were merely advisory, he said. Even if both senators objected to a nomination, it would still go to the floor for a vote.
* A few weeks later, yet another barrier was torn down: Hatch did away with a longtime rule that said at least one member of the minority had to agree in order to end discussion about a nomination and move it out of committee.
And now Hatch wants to lecture others about “abuse” of Senate procedure? Please.