The president's decision to resubmit 20 people who were not confirmed for federal judgeships could kick off the new Congress with another ugly fight.
Published December 31, 2004
If history is the guide, the new year's bash President Bush apparently wants to throw for Congress will be an all-nighter. At least, that's what happened the last time he and fellow Republicans in the Senate refused to take no for an answer on 10 controversial federal judge nominees.
This time, the president comes equipped with what he calls a "mandate," which is how he interprets 51.1 percent of the popular vote. As such, Bush is renominating 20 people whose confirmations were blocked in the Senate, seven of them by Democratic filibuster. Though the Democrats helped confirm 204 of his first-term federal court judges, Bush casts them as villains of democracy for their role in blocking floor votes on a total of 10. The list of re-nominees is hardly mainstream. It includes former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, who once called the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision "the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law." Pryor was appointed during congressional recess in February to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Republicans, or at least Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, seem all too eager for another ugly fight. Little more than a year ago, at Frist's insistence, Republicans put on an odd made-for-TV protest of the Democratic filibusters on judicial nominees. The Republicans spent 40 straight hours, through daylight and darkness, decrying delay tactics.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has since taken control of the Judiciary Committee from the combative Orrin Hatch, and Specter immediately finds himself in the middle of a fight that is certain to draw political blood. Specter almost lost his own committee chairmanship after religious conservatives condemned his post-election observation that Democrats might block antiabortion judicial nominees, so he will be expected to play the good soldier. Still, he is clearly not pleased, and told the Washington Post: "I would have preferred there would have been an interlude before they were resubmitted to provide an opportunity to improve the climate on the Judiciary Committee."
Bush is not looking for an interlude between Acts I and II, though. He is looking for Democrats to stand down, and Frist keeps hinting he will employ what is known as the "nuclear option" if they don't. That option, which allows a majority of senators to ban the filibuster, could poison almost every action Congress takes next year.
Few things in Bush's first term were as bitterly partisan as the fights for his judicial nominees, and he could not have calculated a more explosive way to open the next Congress. Maybe that's his wish. Some speculate he is setting a brush fire to keep the Democratic engines busy while he gets ready for a Supreme Court appointment. Others say, more cynically, he is eager for any fight that keeps Iraq casualties off the front page. No matter his motivation, the end result is the same. Before he swears his second oath of office, he is splintering the Congress he spent two political campaigns pledging to unite.
