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Scalia the Second, and a fine mess Thursday, Nov 3, 2005 By John Brummett George W. Bush got his presidency into such a mess that he was forced to run to the very bosom of his right-wing base and make a bitterly divisive nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court that could render the U.S. Senate largely dysfunctional. Samuel Alito appears to be one hard-right dude. He once voted in the minority in an appeals court case that it was acceptable for Pennsylvania to enact a law saying women could not get abortions without talking to their husbands first. That's a perfectly appropriate marital policy, one I'd recommend, assuming a healthy marriage free of abuse. But sometimes that's a dangerous assumption. And it relegates women to second-class citizenship to tell them not as a matter of personal advice, but by law of the land, that they must get their husband's permission before choosing an otherwise legal and personal medical procedure. Using the state to subjugate women in a way that men aren't - that's what much of this religious and cultural war is all about. This nomination likely will present the worst of times for U.S. Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Pryor's "Gang of 14" likely won't be able to hold the center with its tenuous leverage that is supposed to preclude mathematically any Democratic filibuster or any Republican repeal of the filibuster rule. Pryor was saying all the right things when I spoke with him earlier in the week. The "Gang of 14," seven centrist Democrats and seven centrist Republicans, was staying in close touch, he said. Members had candid and trusting relationships, he said. We weren't yet in any position, he said, to declare the "extraordinary circumstance" by which the gang would go its partisan ways. But we'd already seen extraordinary circumstances. To nominate this Scalia look-alike was extraordinary in itself. And the very essence of the Gang of 14 was that president should take seriously the constitutional requirement that he seek the Senate's "advice and consent" on such nominations. Pryor said at least 70 senators got presidential calls ahead of time about John Roberts. He was one of them. But he told me Monday that he hadn't talked with a single, solitary senator, Republican or Democrat, who got advance consultation this time from the president. A key Republican member of the gang, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, already had said ominously that a Democratic filibuster would not be tolerated. Here's why the Senate may implode, and why Pryor and Lincoln won't have a very good time trying to serve a pro-choice party and a Southern conservative constituency. If the Gang of 14 fails to hold, then the Democratic leadership will want to impose a filibuster by which only a supermajority of 60 senators could call a vote on Alito. He could be confirmed by 51 Republican votes, you see, but not if a vote couldn't be called because a filibuster was being sustained by 41 Democratic votes. That means Pryor and Lincoln probably won't be able to vote for or against Alito without their vote really mattering. Their participation will be key to imposing a filibuster. Neither could play both sides against the middle by voting against a filibuster to permit an up-or-down vote, then voting against the nomination itself. To vote against a filibuster would be to confirm Scalia the Second to a swing vote on the court. If a filibuster is imposed by Democrats, then the Republican leadership will return to the ploy it threatened earlier this year to repeal by a simple majority vote the rule allowing a filibuster. If Republicans do that, Democrats will call it an outrageous affront to Senate tradition and proceed with what they threatened to do before. That is shut down the Senate, basically, by refusing to go along with procedural courtesies. Harriet Miers will look better all the time. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
