A study in deception

David Brooks is today's subject:

Every few years another civilizing custom is breached. Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away.

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The Senate operates by precedent, trust and unanimous consent. Changing the rules by raw majority power would rip the fabric of Senate life.

Ah, Davey, Davey, Davey... trying to pull a fast one, eh?

Yes, in a technical sense, Brooks is right; to my knowledge, filibusters have not been used by the minority at this level. But what Brooks doesn't say is why: they have never had to do so before.

Davey conveniently omits the fact that the Republicans have already "chang[ed] the rules by raw majority power." In the past, a judge up for an appointment could be effectively vetoed if both senators from the judge's home state declined to turn in what are known as "blue slips." But during the Clinton years, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, decided to change the rule to make it easier for the Republicans to block his appointments: only one withheld blue slip would be necessary. The abuse of this power was rampent; for example, Helms used that power to block all African American nominees from North Carolina.

What happened when Bush became President? Wouldn't the Democrats be able to blue slip Bush's nominees?

Nope. Hatch switched back to the two-blue slip rule. Nice, eh? The Dems controlled the Senate for a brief period of time when Jeffords became an independent and reverted back to one blue slip, but they never really got a chance to use it before losing control of the Senate again (and Hatch again switched to a two-blue slip standard to make it tougher on Dems to oppose nominees). The only recourse the Democrats had from all this is the filibuster, but even then, they have been very moderate in its use: of the 214 Bush nominees sent to the Senate for a vote during his first term, Democrats blocked only ten, or in other words 95 percent of Bush's nominees were approved. On the other hand, the Senate blocked 35% of Clinton's circuit court nominees during the 1995-2000 period of his presidency (coinciding to the period during which Hatch switched to the one-blue slip rule).

It is worth noting that the policy of blue slips was intended as a device to encourage counseltation and feedback. The blue slips themselves were the vehicle by which the senators from the judge's home state provided candid (and private) commentary on the President's nominations. They have since been perverted from an instrument of dialogue to one of obstruction, leaving the minority with no alternative to avoid being steamrolled except to use the filibuster.

In conclusion, Brooks needs to STFU.

P.S. And I didn't even talk about his bizarre central thesis... reversing Roe v. Wade will make political unpleasentness disappear? What is he smoking?

Update: Robert No-Facts gets in on the action as well. Note how he maintains that Byrd made four different rules changes by majority votes but doesn't really provide any details regarding what they actually did or what they were pertaining to. Additionally, he drops lines on Bryd's past KKK involvement and the use of the filibuster to prevent civil rights legislation from coming to vote; however, he conveniently ignores the fact that Byrd has long since recanted his involvement with the KKK on multiple occasions, and that the civil rights filibusters were maintained by Republicans and southern Democrats who are now in the Republican party (this is somewhat akin to the Republicans claiming the heritage of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclaimation. Yes, Lincoln was a Republican, but what that meant back then is radically different than what it means now).