Arlen Specter’s rise to Judiciary Committee chairman was presumptive. He was next in line, Senate term-limit rules prevented Orrin Hatch from keeping the gavel, and Specter was facing no challenge for the slot. It was a foregone conclusion, right up until Nov. 3.
The burden, however, has clearly shifted. Whereas his right-wing critics were taking on the challenge of stopping Specter’s ascension, Bill Frist articulated a situation yesterday in which the burden is now on Specter to prove that he deserves the job. In other words, the right doesn’t have to establish that Specter is unfit for the chairmanship; Specter has to convince his colleagues that he should get the post he was already sort of promised to begin with.
Sen. Arlen Specter must prove to his Republican colleagues that he is the right man to head the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday.
Frist, R-Tennessee, would not say if he backed Specter, R-Pennsylvania, for the job. Specter will make his case to GOP colleagues this week when Congress returns for a postelection session.
[…]
Frist said Specter’s comments were “disheartening to me. They were disheartening to a lot of different people,” Frist told “Fox News Sunday.”
This represented a subtle shift in the controversy. Specter, to hear Frist tell it, will have to beg. He’ll have his most direct chance as early as tomorrow.
Roll Call reported today:
Senate Republicans are moving quickly to rule on Sen. Arlen Specter’s…bid to chair the Judiciary Committee with a pair of meetings Tuesday likely to determine his fate. Recognizing that conservative activists intend to keep up the pressure to deny Specter the chairmanship, Senate leaders have set a meeting with the moderate Republican for Tuesday morning; the Pennsylvanian is slated to sit down with the nine other GOP members of the panel later that afternoon.
Under normal circumstances, the decision on committee chairmanships would not be decided until the new Congress convenes in January. Frist and others have decided, however, that letting this mess drag on for a couple of months would do more harm than good, so they’ll decide the matter sooner rather than later.
If Frist’s weekend comments are any indication, Specter will have to effectively guarantee total support for every Bush nominee.
Frist said he expected a chairman to understand that he is responsible “to the feelings, the wishes, the beliefs, the values, the procedures that are held by the majority of that committee.”
He added that Specter, as chairman, “has a clear obligation … to take what the president nominates [and] get that nomination through committee.”
This happens to be a classic look at the way Republicans operate in Bush’s America. Lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee are, in theory, supposed to weigh would-be judges’ qualifications for lifetime appointments to the federal bench. If a nominee is capable, senators should vote for him or her and send the nomination to the Senate floor; if not, they vote against. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work in principle.
Frist, however, explained an entirely different look at the process. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee isn’t supposed to consider White House judicial nominees on the merits; he or she is supposed — indeed, as “a clear obligation” — to support those nominees, whether they’re qualified or not.
No wonder the Republican Congress doesn’t believe in oversight — lawmakers don’t even understand the process. Or, more likely, they do understand it, but just don’t care anymore.