Little Red Blog

Senate Democrats made a rather clear statement today that their intention is to defend their attack on the Constitutional balance of powers even at the risk of shutting down the Senate. Behind Senator Harry Reid, 37 other Democratic Senators, stood in agreement as Reid made his argument that it is the Republicans who are attempting to “break down the separation of powers and ram through their appointees to the judicial branch.”

Here, via RealClearPolitics, is Senator Reid’s statement.

On a late September day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention finished its work. As Benjamin Franklin walked down the steps of Independence Hall, a Philadelphia woman named Elizabeth Powell stopped him and asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got: a republic or a monarchy?"

He responded, "A republic. If you can keep it."

For more than two centuries, we have kept our republic because Americans have understood that our liberty is protected by our laws and by a government of limited powers.

Our Constitution provides for checks and balances so that no one person in power, so that no one political party can hold total control over the course of our nation.

But now, in order to break down the separation of powers and ram through their appointees to the judicial branch, President Bush and the Republican leadership want to eliminate a two-hundred-year-old American rule saying that every member of the Senate can rise to say their piece and speak on behalf of the people that sent them here.

The fact is that this President has a better record of having his judicial nominees approved than any President in the past twenty-five years. Only ten of 214 nominations have been turned down.

So it is clear that this attempt to strip away these important checks and balances is not about judges. It is about the desire for absolute power.

But our nation's basic rules are there for the moments when the eyes of the powerful grow large and hungry; when their willfulness makes them determined to do whatever it takes to win, and prevail at whatever the cost.

Presidents and parties have grown drunk with power before. Two Presidents of my own party --Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt-- began their second terms of office with majorities in Congress and then tried to change the rules governing judges so that they could stack the court with those who would do their bidding. They were wrong to try to change our basic American rules -- and Americans, and Senators of both parties, stood up to tell them so.

Today, another attempt is being considered to rewrite the rules so that those in power can get their way.

It would mean that the US Senate becomes merely a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch.

It would mean that one political party --be it Republicans today or Democrats tomorrow-- gets to have all the say.

Senator Reid fails to note that every Senator gets an opportunity to share his view, his advice and then through the vote his consent or lack thereof, unless the Democrats continue to filibuster nominees. President Bush recent nominated 12 judicial candidates for a second time. Those twelve were not voted down. No vote was taken and the current rule that a supermajority is required to bring them to a vote flies directly in the face of the letter and intent of the Constitution.

Our republic requires many things in order to be kept. Senate Democrats are expressing a form of partisanship that denies their patriotism and devotion to the Constitution in favor of their devotion to their Party and its power. In order to keep the Republic, we must make it abundantly clear to Republican and Democratic Senators alike that such action is morally reprehensible and violates the oath that each of them pledged upon taking office. As Senator Reid might be apt to say – Let Every Vote Count.