Five Republican senators who should know better on the nuclear option

[quaoar]

To this list I would add Richard Shelby of Alabama.

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.22451,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

These Five Senators Know Better Than to Go Nuclear. Don't They?

By Norman J. Ornstein

Roll Call
Publication Date: May 4, 2005

The fate of the Senate now rests in the hands of a handful of Republicans who have been great figures of the Senate, custodians of its traditions and its essence. They will soon come to a crossroads on the “nuclear” option and the filibuster.

A few are uncommitted on the question; others are presumed to be aligned with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). All, I believe, know better, and each will be judged by history on their choice in this matter. They include Dick Lugar of Indiana, Ted Stevens of Alaska, John Warner of Virginia, Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

In 1976 and 1977, I served on the staff of a Senate select committee charged with reorganizing the Senate’s committee system. Following the customary practice, the 12 Senators on the panel were evenly divided between the two parties. The assignment was the fifth or sixth committee for each of the members, ensuring that few of the 12 spent any time at all on the panel’s work. But one who did was Domenici, then a freshman.

One late evening as we worked, I turned to Domenici and asked him why he was spending so many hours on a thankless task like ours. After all, his constituents would never notice, and any changes we recommended for committee numbers and jurisdictions were likely to be opposed vigorously by the committee chairmen and other power-brokers. He replied that service in the Senate was the highest honor he could receive, and he was determined to leave the place a better institution than when he arrived.

[Starfury]

1. Excellent article!

More:

To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation--debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say--regardless of the view held since the Senate’s beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents--they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.

There have been times in the past when Senate leaders and presidents have been frustrated by inaction in the Senate and have contemplated action like this. Each time, the leaders and presidents drew back from the precipice. They knew that the short-term gain of breaking minority obstruction would come at the price of enormous long-term damage--turning a deliberative process into something akin to government by the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Rule XXII is clear about extended debate and cloture requirements, both for changing Senate rules (two-thirds required) and any other action by the Senate, nominations or legislation (60 Senators required). Ignored in this argument has been Senate Rule XXXI, which makes clear that there is neither guarantee nor expectation that nominations made by the president get an up-or-down vote, or indeed any action at all.

It reads: “Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President.”

[BillZBubb]

2. I have all except Warner as sure yes votes on nuclear.

Stevens and Cochran beyond question. They are wingnuts. Lugar and Domenici know better, but will toe the party line no matter the consequences.

Warner may just hold to Senate tradition. If so, he could be the one that kills Frist's scheme.

I still think Frist doesn't have the votes. Otherwise, he'd have done the deed by now. He's stepping up the pressure, though, by telling everyone the day to vote is near.

[tsuki]

6. What about Snowe? eoq

[BillZBubb]

8. Snowe will vote NO as of today, IMO.

I think there are three solid Northern Repug NO votes: Snowe, Collins, Chaffee. McCain is a solid NO. With Warner and one other (maybe Lindsey Graham), the "nuke" option will fail.

The one thing Frist has going for him is the knowledge by all that the Repugs have NEVER been punished at the polls for overstepping. So, those NO votes have to be based on deep conviction which doesn't look good for our side.

[LittleClarkie]

3. Is AEI neutral, or do they lean to the left or to the right

I can't get a clear sense from their homepage, which might be a good sign.

I don't care really, as long as they're logic is clear enough.

[Starfury]

4. You be the judge...

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/aei.htm

"The American Enterprise Institute, which was formed in 1943 and has in the past functioned as a more traditional think tank, has nonetheless been regarded as exercising significant influence in Washington circles.

Indeed, while acknowledging the generally important policy role of national think tanks, Ronald Reagan said of AEI that " has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute."

Second on the list of grant recipients of the conservative foundations, AEI garnered close to $7 million over the 1992-1994 period to help finance its work in domestic and foreign policy affairs. Senior AEI staff include Robert Bork, Lynne Cheney, Charles Murray, Michael Novak, and approximately 30 other conservative public intellectuals and activists, many of whom are closely intertwined with the institutional apparatus of the right. William Baroody, Jr., AEI's president between 1978 and 1986, was explicit about AEI's intention to mobilize public and elite opinion and to shape major national policy issues, acknowledging that policy relevance depends to a great extent on effective techniques to relate ideology to constituency.

Judging from AEI's own statements, the institution has moved to assume a more aggressive and conservative public policy role, perhaps owing to conservative efforts to "defund" the think tank during the mid-1980s when some judged its research orientation to be too centrist. In 1986, the Olin and Smith Richardson foundations withdrew their support from AEI because of substantive disagreement with certain of its policies, causing Baroody to resign in the ensuing financial crisis. Today, AEI contrasts the sequestered nature of much university-based research with its own efforts to produce products of "immediate, practical utility" aimed at developing solutions to "real world" policy problems. In 1995, Demuth indicated in an interview with Insightmagazine that the November 1994 elections moved national budget issues and regulatory reform higher on AEI's agenda, which has at any rate always had an emphasis on such domestic economic issues as the deregulation of business and the privatization of government services."

<rest snipped>

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Still, seemed like a solid, reasonable article against the filibuster. Makes you wonder just how much support Frist really has. At least, that's my hope! :)

[BlueIris]

5. It's interesting that Gordon Smith (OR) isn't on here.

I knew I couldn't be the only one to have written him off as a lost cause. I mean, I guess I could call his offices (once AGAIN--fourth time) and continue to lodge my protests, but it seems he's got his mind made up (and excuses aplenty to spin away his actions).

[BillZBubb]

7. Gordon Smith is a wingnut. He's a solid YES vote

There should be no surprise there.