Charlie makes mincemeat of various Democrats’ hypocrisy concerning their stances on the filibuster. I have only one thing to add. Many of them hide behind, as a newfound justification for their opposition, a supposed inability to tolerate “filibuster abuse.” It is an effort to recast something they themselves have used or defended in the past as something that is now unconscionable.
I see in this attempt to rewrite history and to warp language in service of a partisan end to destroy an institution an echo of the attempt by Democrats and the Left to redefine what was meant by “Court-packing.” You may recall that there was a period in which Joe Biden, in the midst of his presidential campaign, refused to comment on growing calls elsewhere for the addition of more justices to the Supreme Court. He said that voters did not deserve to know what his stance was, and that it would become “the discussion” if he revealed it. (Which, of course, it would have deserved to be!)
Though he eventually did supply his view, Biden spent some time before doing so sanctioning an effort on the left to change the definition of “Court-packing,” a term that originated as a description of FDR’s threat to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court when the existing Court repeatedly ruled against him, into something that conservatives were already doing simply by using their constitutional powers to appoint Supreme Court justices and judges elsewhere in the judiciary. As David Harsanyi wrote last October:
According to the Democrats’ new definition, “court packing” is no longer an unprecedented power grab and manipulation of a political branch meant to undermine the separation of powers. It now entails duly elected Republicans merely nominating and confirming judges for vacant seats, using the very same method that duly elected officials have been relying on to nominate and confirm justices since the beginning of the republic.
Biden unveiled this Orwellian framing on Saturday, saying, “The only court packing going on right now is going on with Republicans packing the court right now . . . ” By Sunday, the entire infrastructure of the Democratic Party — numerous reporters, columnists, and elected officials — had internalized the definition, and were off and running.
On Fox News, Senator Chris Coons noted that “over the past four years we’ve seen unprecedented court packing.” Senator Dick Durbin told Chuck Todd, with no push-back, that the court packing had become a “common question being asked because the American people have watched the Republicans packing the court over the last three and a half years. And they brag about it. They’ve taken every vacancy and filled it.”
Alexandra DeSanctis wrote along similar lines at the time as well.
The playbook here is familiar: to justify a partisan power grab that would destroy the constitutional order, change the meaning of words, recast history, and use whatever other weapons are available. But that doesn’t make it any less unsettling.