Hypocrisy and the Filibuster

This "Nuclear Option" is about power and manipulation. The demagogues--James Dobson, pretty boys Bill Frist and Tony Perkins, and backroom manipulator Orrin Hatch--are pretending that the filibuster is something that it is not. Notwithstanding the current posturing by buff Republicans and well-fed televangelists, the filibuster has been a strategy deployed by members of both parties.

This is not the first time politicians in a hurry have been frustrated by the filibuster. "Rule 22" was adopted because of filibustering by pacifists in the Senate before WWI. Rule 22 allowed cloture on a vote of a two-thirds majority. In 1975, cloture became possible with a three-fifths majority. Now that they control House, Senate, and the Executive, the Republicans want absolute control and want to abolish this last device of protection for the minority opinion. Eliminating the filibuster in this situation is the equivalent of saying "Shut up! There are more of us and we don't have to listen to you."

This address (http://www.tacitus.org/story/2005/4/5/231418/9021) is a link to the way the Republicans thought about judicial nominees when the White Hosue was in the hands of the Democrats. They were more underhanded, but willing to filibuster when the sneakiness failed. Ah, for those days!

The claim by the pious folk, who in other times attack other religions, that the filibuster of judicial nominees is an atttack on "people of faith" is quite a logical stretch, but Dobson and Perkins seem sure it will sell with the intended audience. For Presbyterian Frist, this is abouot consolidation of power, since "blue slips" and simply not holding hearings are no longer available to prevent the "up or down" vote these well-dressed and coiffed statesmen demand.

Politica and religion. What a formula for hypocrisy!