Many Americans, and not a few U.S. senators, have been hoping and expecting to see a compromise emerge in the showdown over President Bush’s judicial appointments.
Such an agreement might allow for a vote on some of the nominees while retaining the filibuster, a practice that protects minority rights and often keeps the Senate a more deliberative institution than the House of Representatives.
But Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is having none of that.
No longer content with bashing Democrats in his quest to free up the Bush nominations, now he is going after wavering Republicans.
The Colorado Springs religious broadcaster is using his nationwide radio show to block any compromise over how the Senate handles the stalled judicial nominees.
And it’s not even just moderate Republicans feeling his heat – he gets especially exercised when a pragmatic conservative like Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott tries to do something constructive. Lott was working on a possible compromise that would have put four of Bush’s seven stalled nominees up for a vote if Republicans agreed to preserve the filibuster rule. Dobson hit the roof.
“If Republicans consent to this disaster, they’ll not only be abandoning the men and women who put them in office, they’ll be demonstrating that they do not deserve the leadership entrusted them,” Dobson said. “It’s past time to stop the nonsense. Win or lose, the Republican leadership must call for the constitutional option vote, and do so without anymore delay.”
Or else what?
It’s nothing new for Dobson to get cross-wise with a lawmaker on the right side of the aisle just so he can pander to his base. Former Colorado Sen. Hank Brown tells a story about how he scuttled a ridiculous bill – while it was still in a Senate committee – that would have essentially held the publisher of pornography made in New York accountable for a sex crime committed in California by someone who might have read the book.
Focus on the Family targeted Brown, a conservative lawmaker by any measure, as a champion of pornography, hitting him with a flurry of radio commentary, columns and ads. All this for a bill that never even left committee, proving again that Focus on the Family’s isn’t concerned about good government, but mindless grandstanding and obedient loyalty.
It’s one thing for Dobson to favor an end to filibusters, but he is out of line in threatening senators who are looking for a compromise solution to the impasse.
Compromise is how work often gets done in government, and properly so in such a diverse democracy. It gives a voice to all sides of a debate, not just one.
