Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration
strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being drawn.
Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear
option is even being openly discussed.
The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea?
No, much closer to home: the U.S. Senate.
Salivating at the chance to radically remake the
Supreme Court, the president and his loyal lapdogs in the world's most
exclusive club
are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of
Senate tradition by eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial
nominees.
The Robert's Rules of Disorder scheme would involve
-- who else? -- Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate
officer,
ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional
and Majority Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats' inevitable objection
to such an
edict by tabling the motion. As long as we're
"spreading democracy" abroad, no reason to leave out the home front, right?
This is the so-called nuclear option, embraced
with a wink and a nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative
Federalist Society: "One way or another, the
filibuster of judicial nominees must end."
Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would
eliminate unlimited debate on judicial nominations and lower the number
of votes needed
before a nominee could be confirmed from the
60 necessary to break a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would
drive a stake
through the heart of the Senate's long-standing
commitment -- indeed one of its founding purposes -- to defending the rights
of the minority.
This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping
with what Time magazine lauds this week as President Bush's "ten-gallon-hat
leadership"
style -- a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted
in arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already
delivered him
a rubber-stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber-stamp
Senate.
Over the course of Bush's first term, 204 of his
judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This
is the highest number
of lower-court confirmations any president has
had in his first term since 1980, including President Reagan. But, apparently,
the highest is
not enough. This president wants total approval
of his every wish. One small problem: That's not the way the Founding Fathers
designed
things. They had these funny notions about three
separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and the
value of checks
and balances to ward off overreaching for power
by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to
counteract the abuse
that inevitably goes with overreaching.
Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away
with judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president
and his congressional
accomplices. It's an underhanded scheme to kneecap
the Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are
left
with to defend against Bush's "ten-gallon-hat"
juggernaut.
It would be impossible to overstate the importance
of this battle. It is nothing less than a fight for the soul of our democracy
-- for what kind
of country we want to live in.
"George W. Bush," Ralph Neas, president of People
for the American Way, told me, "has made it clear, both through his public
comments
and through the judges he has nominated to appellate
courts, that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that would
roll back
many of the social and legal gains of the last
century."
According to Neas, who has been at the forefront
of judicial battles since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is
not just about
Roe vs. Wade -- it's also about turning the clock
back to a time when states' rights and property rights trumped the protection
of
individual liberties and the ability of Congress
to act in the common good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement,
environmental protection, and worker health and
safety.
This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a
realistic appraisal of the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush
has already appointed
-- and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia
and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justices the president has cited
as his models for
future nominees to the high court. "Courting
Disaster 2004," a study by the People for the American Way Foundation,
found that adding just
one or two Scalia/Thomas clones to the Supreme
Court would put at risk more than 100 precedents and the legal protections
they safeguard.
We're talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative
action, worker protections, access to contraceptives and legal abortions,
laws protecting
our clean air and drinking water, and on and
on.
Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something
most Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog during
the holidays.
But the impact these rules can have on our lives
is staggering. And that must be made clear right now -- not when Rehnquist
resigns and Cheney
and Frist team up to push the nuclear button.
By then it will be much too late, and all incoming Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid will be able
to do is duck and cover. True leadership is being
able to see not just the crisis staring you in the face but the one lurking
just around the corner.
President Bush is pulling on his oversize Stetson
and gearing up for battle. And here, unlike in Iraq, he's making sure his
political troops have all
the armor they need. The Democrats need to preemptively
launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people about what is
at stake in
the coming assault on our democratic values.
If they succeed, they will have the public with
them, even if it becomes necessary to resort to threats of mutually assured
legislative destruction.
Let's hope that's not what it will take to protect
the Senate, the Constitution and over 65 years of hard-won social victories
from the GOP's
looming nuclear winter.
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Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated
columnist, the co-host of the National Public Radio program "Left, Right,
and Center,"
and the author of 10 books. Her latest is "Fanatics
and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America."