{"id":4621,"date":"2005-07-06T10:43:55","date_gmt":"2005-07-06T14:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4621.html"},"modified":"2005-07-06T10:43:55","modified_gmt":"2005-07-06T14:43:55","slug":"it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-history-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-history-is\/","title":{"rendered":"It depends on what the meaning of ‘history’ is"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s rhetoric<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political architect, said precedents from the most recent Supreme Court vacancies suggest that opposition-party senators have a responsibility to back a president’s choice if they believe a nominee is qualified, even if they disagree with the person’s views. […]<\/p>\n

“Throughout the history of the republic, Supreme Court nominations receive an up-or-down vote,” Rove said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and there’s reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Senate was launched on a full-blown filibuster, with one South Carolina senator consuming time by reading “long passages of James F. Byrnes’s memoirs in a thick Southern accent,” according to a newspaper account. […]<\/p>\n

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told his panel this month that the judicial battles have escalated, “with the filibuster being employed for the first time in the history of the Republic.” … Such claims, however, are at odds with the record of the successful 1968 GOP-led filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson’s nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice of the United States. “Fortas Debate Opens with a Filibuster,” a Page One Washington Post story declared on Sept. 26, 1968. It said, “A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice.” […]<\/p>\n

Some current Republican leaders — citing comments by then-Sen. Robert P. Griffin (R-Mich.), who led the Fortas opposition — say the 1968 debate was not a true filibuster. But there is little in the record to support that assertion. The Washington Post reported on Oct. 2, 1968: “In a precedent-shattering rebuff to the Administration, the Senate yesterday refused to cut off the filibuster against consideration of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice.” The Congressional Quarterly Almanac reported in 1968: “The effort to block the confirmation by means of a filibuster was without precedent in the history of the Senate.” The Senate Web site’s account of the episode is headlined “Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In all sincerity, I hope a filibuster won’t be necessary when Bush announces his Supreme Court nominee. But if a filibuster is used, it won’t be a first for the “history of the republic,” only the first since 1968.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s rhetoric… Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political architect, said precedents from the most recent Supreme Court vacancies suggest that opposition-party senators have a responsibility to back a president’s choice if they believe a nominee is qualified, even if they disagree with the person’s views. […] “Throughout the history of the republic, Supreme Court nominations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}