Grab for total power endangers democracy

Some of the best sense made so far about the Senate filibuster/judge nominations controversy comes from Al Gore.

The former Vice President weighed in last Wednesday on a looming threat to the Senate’s unique filibuster rule, which ensures the minority will not be silenced and then run over at every turn. Gore spoke at a MoveOn.org event in Washington, D.C.

With clear, straightforward logic, drawing on history and his personal experience as a senator, president of that body and candidate in a contested presidential election, Gore laid out what radical Republicans are about in this conflict. He also made clear how and why what they’re about threatens our democratic system.

Speaking with energy and conviction, Gore showed none of the anger apparent in his year-ago blast at what President George W. Bush and his administration have done to the country.

Here are highlights from “Breaking the Rules to Destroy Our Courts” that we find particularly informative and compelling.

   . . . The spokesman for the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said: “There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary.”

Misunderstanding?

   The Chief of Staff for another Republican senator called for “mass impeachment” by using the bizarre right-wing theory that the president can declare that any judge is no longer exhibiting “good behavior,” adding that, “then the judge’s term has simply come to an end. The President gives them a call and says: ‘Clean out your desk. The Capitol police will be in to help you find your way home.”’

   The elected and appointed Republican officials who made these dangerous statements are reflecting an even more broadly-held belief system of grassroots extremist organizations that have made the destruction of judicial independence the centerpiece of their political agenda.

   Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, who hosted a speech by the Senate Majority Leader last Sunday, has said, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench.” Explaining that during his meeting with Republican leaders, the leaders discussed stripping funding from certain courts, Perkins said, “What they’re thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and recreating them the next day, but also de-funding them.” Congress could use its appropriations authority to just “take away the bench, all of its staff, and he’s just sitting out there with nothing to do.”

   Another influential leader of one of these groups, James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, focused his anger on the 9th circuit court of appeals: “Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

   . . . Our founders understood that there is in all human beings a natural instinct for power. The Revolution they led was precisely to defeat the all-encompassing power of a tyrant thousands of miles away.

   They knew then what Lord Acton summarized so eloquently a hundred years later: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

   . . . That is precisely why they established a system of checks and balances to prevent the accretion of power in any one set of hands — either in one individual or a group because they were wary of what Madison famously called “factions.”

   Yet today that is precisely what a small group of radical Republicans is trying to do. And they threaten a fundamental break with a system that has served us well for 230 years and has served as a model for the rest of the world.

   . . . The rules and traditions of the Senate all derive from this desire to ensure that the voice of the minority could be heard. The filibuster has been at the heart of this tradition for nearly the entire 230 years of the Senate’s existence. Yet never before has anyone felt compelled to try to eliminate it.

   The proposal from the Senate majority leader to abolish the right of unlimited debate is a poison pill for America’s democracy. It is the stalking horse for a dangerous American heresy that would substitute persuasion on the merits with bullying and an effort at partisan domination.

Dealing with afterthoughts of irony: Gore won the popular vote for president in the 2000 election. He speaks now with the quality of thought and purpose we expect, value and admire in a president. In watching Gore’s speech on C-SPAN, we couldn’t help but make comparisons with the press conference remarks last week by the Supreme Court’s choice for president in 2000.

This left us muttering, “And conservatives think they have a bone to pick with judges and their sometimes awful decisions!”