It’s now apparent that U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will do for the Republican Party what Newt Gingrich did for the Democrats.
Reid, who has been in the public spotlight for just a few months, has quickly become the Democrat Republicans love to hate. On Tuesday, barely hours after a group of Republican and Democratic senators announced an agreement to end the Senate dispute over the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees, Reid was on the floor of the U.S. Senate mischaracterizing that agreement.
Reid said the compromise means that the filibuster has been preserved and that Republicans can’t again propose changing the rules to bar its use to block judicial nominees.
He also claimed the agreement means the U.S. Supreme Court will now be protected from the “radical right wing” of the Republican Party and that the constitutional scheme of checks and balances has been saved.
Then, barely pausing for a breath, Reid mischaracterized the judicial record of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, whose confirmation to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was pending. He casually repeated the discredited claim that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has labeled Owen a judicial activist. Gonzales, under oath in his own confirmation hearing, vigorously denied that claim.
Not long ago, Reid also asserted that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas lacked writing skills and was an embarrassment to the court. It quickly became apparent, however, that Reid couldn’t cite a case on which that opinion was based.
Unperturbed, he has gone on to make a number of other questionable statements that also cry out for rebuttal, these among them:
Reid said that President Bush, by seeking an up or down vote on his nominees to the appellate courts, is seeking “absolute power.” If seeking a vote on a judicial nominee is a quest for “absolute power,” then the English language has lost its meaning.
Reid insists the filibuster is designed to protect the interests of a political “minority.” There is some truth in this, since the Senate itself is fashioned in a way that gives small states equal footing with big states. But the best protection for a political minority is the election process. Reid seems to believe that if the Democratic Party can’t win Senate seats, it should nonetheless be entitled to trump the rights of those who won the election.
Reid claims constitutional “checks and balances” also apply to minority parties. Checks and balances traditionally referred to the relationship between the three branches of government. It is hard to believe that the framers very much cared which parties were in the minority.
Reid and other Democrats have lately claimed that the constitutional mandate for the U.S. Senate to “advise and consent” in the selection of judges means that it should help screen the nominees. It has been suggested, for example, that a committee be formed to fashion a slate of acceptable nominees and then submit them to the president. This is arrogance of a high order and bespeaks a misunderstanding of what is at stake. There is a world of difference between U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Clinton’s nominee, and Antonin Scalia, a Ronald Reagan appointee. Does anyone believe Scalia or Clarence Thomas would be the first choice of a committee of moderate U.S. senators?
The question of who should be the next nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court is of enormous importance. The court as it now sits is probably just one vote away from doing away with the death penalty. It is probably only a couple of votes away from approving gay marriage. Who knows? A change of three seats could approve euthanasia on a national scale.
Should Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a solid conservative vote on the court for the last three decades, retire this summer, the issue of the Senate filibuster rules will quickly be back in the news.
When it is, this week’s compromise will be a fading memory as the Senate finally faces the issue it managed to avoid this week.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff.
