By. Ron WaltersNNPA Columnist
Here we go again: conservative Republicans have no problem posing – and attempting to implement – the most radical solution to a problem, even if it means trashing a 200-year tradition of Constitution of the United States. Because Democrats in the Senate have used their ”advise and consent” responsibility to filibuster, and thus to block Senate approval of extreme judges, Republicans are thinking about changing the Senate rule that takes two-thirds vote (60) to cut off a filibuster and make it a simple majority, or 51 votes. Senator Charles Schumer of New York called this the ”Nuclear Option” because it would cause Democrats in the Senate to retaliate by avoiding the Senate for all but the most pressing business, thus shutting down much of the work.After his re-election, George Bush sent up to the Senate a list of possible appointments for the federal bench that included all those who were blocked in the last session of Congress. In other words, he is trying to cram his proposed judges down the throat of the minority in the Senate, whether they like them or not. This is raw, arrogant stuff. Conservatives have used the filibuster in their own role as the minority. Strom Thurmond, for example, once spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to delay the Senate passage of the 1957 Civil Rights bill. But now when the rules do not favor their attempt to install at every level a Right Wing tilt to justice in this country, they want to change the rules, rather than preserve the traditional Constitutional processes. Republicans now control 55 of the 100 Senate seats, and they control the Judiciary Committee 10-8, and they just voted out of committee one of the nominees that Bush had proposed before on a straight party vote. It’s after the nominees get out of committee to the floor is when the fun starts.What is at stake was seen in the recent Terri Schiavo case, where the conservative constituency of the Republican Party wanted to rely on federal judges to implement their agenda at local levels around the country. In other words, they want to be paid for their role in having put George Bush back into the White House and they are ready with a frightening agenda that would set social relations back 75 years with the privatization of public resources, sexual issues and anti-Civil Rights at the top. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid knows he is in a fight but the question is whether he is up to it. He has said: ”If they don’t get what they want, they attack whoever’s around. Now they’re after the courts and I think it goes back to this arrogance of power.” He is right and it’s one thing to know what you’re up against and another to have the ability to organize the troops to fight. In other words, will the Democrats in the Senate hang together as tough as the radical Republicans? They haven’t show it, even in the recent vote on the Schiavo case, when many Democrats in the House defected, including some members of the Black Caucus. Nine of them voted to allow the federal judicial review, 18 didn’t show up to vote at all, and the rest voted against it.The radicalism of this crowd is seen in comments made by two Texas Republicans. Tom Delay, under fire in the House for presumptive ethics violations, said that in the Schiavo case, of the judges who voted against the review, ”The time would come when they would have to answer for their behavior.” But Senator John Cornyn said that the judicial outcome of the Schiavo case frustrated people and ”build up and build up to the point where some people engage in violence…” Leading Democrats were quick to denounce this as demagoguery and threatening to the judiciary’s independence. Republicans have called this the restoration of ”majority rule,” but it smacks of the elevation of party rule, something the framers of the Constitution never meant to happen. Instead, they built into the procedures of Congress a system of checks and balances and the filibuster is one which gives a voice to the minority in policy making. Imagine what could happen in a Congress that was dominated by one party, which changed the rules to do whatever it wanted, and was driven by a radical movement outside of that body. We have been close, but we are coming even closer to the total and complete political domination of one ideology that control the major policy-making machinery of this country. With that kind of power and the exclusion, extremes and frustration that it could generate, I could think of another scenario that could spark the rebirth of progressive social movement in this country – eventually. Right now, I wonder who is really looking at this, and if they are looking hard, what they make of the future?Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, director of the African American Leadership Institute in the Academy of Leadership and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-College Park. His latest book is “White Nationalism, Black Interests” (Wayne State University Press).
