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Jewish World Review April 21, 2005 / 12 Nisan, 5765 This Time, McCain Doesn't Get a Pass By James Lileks
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The base will never forgive John McCain.
Oh, they don't hate him; he has that brash, squinty charm that makes him stand out among the dull lumps of coal heaped in the bin of the Senate. His war record earns respect and gratitude — so much, in fact, that his detractors feel compelled to wait three or four seconds before rolling out the big, throbbing BUT that invariably precedes discussion of what they really think of McCain nowadays.
He got a pass on campaign reform, aka the George Soros Empowerment Act, since you can't really slam him for something that Dubya inked into law. But siding with the Democrats against reforming Senate rules to allow a vote for the president's judicial nominees? Unforgivable.
There's politics and then there's the party; there's pragmatism and there are principles. Hillary Clinton's base will forgive her if she moves to the center on abortion, but not if she showed up in Alaska to club seals for a photo op to promote liberalizing pelt tariffs.
McCain may have figured out that the nuclear option will pass, so he won't be blamed for jumping the fence. He could still run for president in '08. Memories are short — and even if the average voter has heard of the Senate confirmation death struggle, John Q. Public may not understand the stakes. In case you haven't paid attention, it sounds like this:
Republicans (or is it Democrats?) want a procedural vote on a caucus resolution to allow a supermajority to change the rules for the plurality of the quorum unless someone brings kryptonite into the Senate chamber, which saps the supermajority of its strength, thereby requiring a cage match between Sens. Robert Byrd and Bill Frist, no holds barred, unless a simple majority — so described because they're just stupid, or "simple" — votes to ban the sleeper hold, which has caused so many deaths in the British parliament.
Whatever's happening, it's making Sen. Charles Schumer sad and concerned. As the Democrat said on ABC's "This Week": "Whenever people try to do this and overreach, the American people sniff something. That's the whole thing that's going on here. Something is in the air. That something is wrong, different than the traditions of America."
There is something in the air: the spring-fresh aroma of a new Democratic buzzword: "overreach." Those mad Republicans are overreaching!
They looked at that election map, awash in red, and assumed they had a mandate to repeal Roe v. Wade, to roll environmental protection so far back that people get a tax break for driving a Hummer over endangered species, to repeal whichever laws of thermodynamics are not found in the Bible.
They're mad with power. Mad! And that's why they want a vote, as the Constitution kindly provides, to show there's bipartisan support for judicial nominees.
This has less to do with the sanctity of the Constitution (cough) and more to do with preserving the courts as the last best hope for "progressive" ideals. The left is more likely to get its agenda in place if the courts are packed with robed solons eager to discover rights in the most unlikely places. The right is more likely to love judges disinclined to find the right to free cable TV in the recesses of the Constitution. This may thwart the desire of some to hasten the egalitarian future for which we are surely bound, but them's the breaks. You lose elections, you don't get to name the judges. Win some elections, and give it another shot.
Expect more talk of overreach as the year goes on and the Democrats attempt to convince voters that the Republican Party wants to repeal the 20th century.
But the only GOP overreach here was performed by McCain, who perhaps believed his boundless popularity would earn him another pass. Expect the GOP base to say nay. You want to ruin our chance to get back the judiciary? You want to be independent? Then run for president as one.
Have your party at the Ross Perot Presidential Library.
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JWR contributor James Lileks is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, James Lileks |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
