GOP Senators Wrong to Blame Democrats for Political Divide on Sotomayor
Posted by Keith Kamisugi | Filed under Confirmation Process, Filibuster, Opinion
In today’s Los Angeles Times, an article by David Savage buys into the Republican rationale for a near party line vote on Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
“Prior to this decade,” writes Savage, “Supreme Court justices who won confirmation usually had the backing of most of the Senate. Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy all won confirmation by unanimous votes. Sotomayor would replace retired Justice David H. Souter, who was confirmed by a 90-9 vote in 1990. The one notable exception among the veteran members of the high court was Justice Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed by a 52-48 vote in 1991.”
A June piece on RollCall.com by Simon Lazarus, public policy counsel to the National Senior Citizens Law Center, rebuts the Republican attempt to rewrite history.
“This blame-the-victim gambit misreads history,” wrote Lazarus. “Professional fitness was not the only reason Republicans voted for Ginsburg, Breyer and most of Clinton’s first-term lower court nominees. Before names were submitted, Hatch had advised Clinton to ‘move to the center’ on his choices, and Clinton acquiesced. Both Supreme Court nominees presented distinctly moderate profiles. Ginsburg’s voting record on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was, as Hatch observed, ‘very similar’ to her former D.C. Circuit colleague Antonin Scalia.”
Many Republicans in the Senate appear to favor changing the rules of the game as it suits their political right-wing agena. When they last controlled the Senate, they opposed filibusters saying that only “up or down” votes were fair (knowing that they had enough votes for a simple majority vote. Now that voters have put Republicans into the Senate minority, they initially refused to rule out filibusters in order to send the message that they would attempt it if they needed to. Most prominent GOP Senators later said on the record they would not support a filibuster against Sotomayor, but only after first making the threat.
Tags: david savage, lat, latimes, los angeles times, party line vote, simon lazarus
