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Daschle has gotten into the habit of shifting the blame for his
controversial decisions — all the way back to the Founding
Fathers. As previous bulletins have noted, Daschle has made the
spurious argument that he is somehow constitutionally required to
deep-six the president's nominees and policies when they can't clear
60 votes in the Senate. (See the second item in the February
11 bulletin.)
Now he's claiming
that to let the full Senate vote on a nomination after a committee
has voted him down would "break a 200-year-old precedent."
The nomination in question is that of Judge Charles Pickering for
a position on a circuit court of appeals. The judiciary committee
defeated him on a party-line vote, and President Bush requested
that Daschle have a floor vote anyway. Daschle's line about precedents
was his explanation for his refusal of the request.
Steve Chabot,
the Ohio Republican who chairs the House subcommittee on the Constitution,
wrote a letter to Daschle calling him on his earlier misrepresentations
of the Founders. He's written again to debunk Daschle's latest claim.
"The precedent to which you refer is unclear," Chabot
writes. "The Constitution, however, is not."
Chabot quotes
Federalist No. 76, in which Alexander Hamilton notes that the president
is "bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion
and determination of a different and independent body, and that
body an entire branch of the legislature." Hamilton makes a
number of similar references.
Chabot also
notes that the Senate in 1789 adopted a resolution requiring a vote
of the full Senate on judicial nominations. As his clincher, Chabot
invokes the words of Laurence Tribe: "what matters most is
that one hundred Senators, of diverse backgrounds and philosophies"
vote on nominees.
Whether or
not Daschle is right to block a floor vote for Judge Pickering,
his claim that he is forced to do it is dubious.
1995
In a posting
on The Corner the other day, I asserted that it was Medicare reform
that derailed the "Republican revolution" following 1994.
The assertion has been disputed. Instapundit
say she's "not so sure" it was Medicare, inclining
instead to the view that the Republicans began to lose support "when
the 1994 class started acting (by about late 1995) like plain old
members of Congress rather than anti-incumbent revolutionaries."
RiShawn Biddle offers me a "history
lesson" in which Republicans' betrayal of the term-limits
movement in March 1995 plays the crucial role. (Biddle, by the way,
wrongly implies that Henry Hyde "decided to break ranks"
at this time; his opposition to term limits had been well known
for several years.)
The poll numbers
for congressional Republicans, and specifically for Newt Gingrich,
declined through most of 1995, and a number of plausible candidates
could be put forward as explanations: the school-lunch fiasco in
the spring; the term-limits vote; the Oklahoma City bombing in April,
which was taken by some to discredit anti-statist rhetoric; and
the budget battles of the fall.
The major point
of contention in those battles was Medicare; the most dramatic events
of them were two government shutdowns. The Republican position on
Medicare, at least as it got through to the public, was highly unpopular.
Democrats stood for something concrete (Medicare benefits) while
Republicans stood for something abstract (a balanced budget). The
shutdowns were also unpopular, and blamed on Republicans.
Gingrich did
not help matters by saying that one reason he was moved toward brinkmanship
on the government shutdown was that President Clinton had dissed
him when they flew together on Air Force One for Yitzhak Rabin's
funeral. (Gingrich alleged, falsely, that Clinton had not said hi
to him during the long flight home and had forced him to take the
rear exit.) Indeed, while that incident is little-remembered today,
it's hard to overstate how damaging it was for Republicans.
I think that
the Medicare/budget fight was the most important factor in the undoing
of Republicans, for three principal reasons. First, more people
care about Medicare, which affects families directly in a big way,
than care about school lunches or term limits. A lot of the "angry
white males" who voted for Republicans in 1994 wanted their
Medicare benefits, or their parents, protected.
Second, Bill
Clinton saw that fight — and not the term-limits vote or even
the school-lunch controversy — as his principal opportunity.
With Dick Morris's help, Clinton bought a big barrage of ads clobbering
Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich in the fall of 1995, mostly on Medicare
and budget issues. Dole never recovered.
Third, Republicans
saw it as a turning point themselves. They saw the budget battles
as their major political defeat, and they never really recovered
their nerve in taking on Bill Clinton on policy issues. And small-government
conservatism has been in retreat ever since.
Lamar
Alexander on Abortion
What his spokesman old
me.
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