Bauer Anticipates Continued Filibustering of Bush Nominees
by Fred Jackson and Jody Brown
March 1, 2005
(AgapePress) - Another battle in the war over President Bush's judicial nominees began today. One conservative Capitol Hill activist says he expects more of the same -- Democrat-led filibusters against those nominees.President Bush has re-nominated a number of people who were turned aside by those filibusters over the last few years. The big question this time, however, is it the Republican-controlled Senate will allow those filibusters to continue -- or use their voting power to end the tactic. But all nominees must first be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families, a Washington, DC-based lobby group, has been observing Specter since the Republican lawmaker was confirmed to the committee chairmanship by his Capitol Hill peers in January. He notes that at a recent press conference, Specter refused to endorse any effort by the GOP to end the seemingly endless filibustering by Democrats. In fact, says Bauer, the senator attributed some of the stalemate to his own party.
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Gary Bauer |
"[H]e said Republicans were partly to blame for the current impasse on judicial confirmations, and he cited as proof for this assertion that some Clinton appointees were also delayed," Bauer says.The conservative spokesman wonders if Specter has forgotten the way two past nominees were treated by Democrats during the confirmation process -- specifically, Judge Robert Bork and current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Bork, he says, was "pilloried and smeared," and Thomas was subjected to a "high-tech lynching" that almost destroyed him and his family.
The reality of the situation, according to Bauer, is that liberals in the Senate have been "egged on by far-left special-interest groups" to do whatever it takes to make sure the federal judiciary remains under the control of their ideology. The result of that control, he concludes, is that courts are remaking America to reflect a liberal worldview. Bauer suggests that Senator Arlen Specter -- a man whose ascension to the Committee chairmanship was championed by several conservative senators -- is doing nothing to stop that downward spiral.
The first candidate up for reconsideration by the Senate is William Myers, who the president has nominated for a seat on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Myers was confirmed in July 2001 by the Senate as Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
