Demagogue

Sen. Frist discusses judges on Larry King

KING: A couple other things, Senator. On those judicial nominations, do you think they'll move swiftly?

FRIST: Well, he hit pretty hard on that tonight, as well. The president made it very clear that what the Senate needs to do -- our obligation, not his, not the House of Representatives' -- but our obligation is to give advice and consent. And the only way we can do that is to give an up-or-down vote, yes or no.

Again, it's been a little disappointing to me to have the Democrats draw a line in the sand, and in the last couple of days say, 'Well, we're not going to give you that vote.'

I'm going to continue to work, as the president will, to give every nominee who's made it through committee an up-or-down vote. And you can vote against them or you can vote for them, just give them an up-or-down vote. So, yes, I think we will accomplish that this year.

KING: Historically, though, hasn't it been always that way? Wasn't Clinton's held up?

FRIST: Well, you know, yes and no. Never on the floor of the United States Senate, never in 200 years of history has a presidential nominee who has majority support been not given an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. We've had cloture votes, and a little mini-filibuster for a day or two days, but every nominee with majority support has gotten an up-or-down vote. They haven't all made it through, but that's all we ask for. But you're right, there are other ways to block, in committee, coming through committee, and every senator will use all of those procedural tools. But once you make it through that committee process, you deserve a vote on the floor of the United States Senate, if we're going to do our constitutional duty as senators to give advice and consent. If your hands are locked up and you can't vote, you can't give advice and consent.

Isn't it amazing how the GOP's success in killing Clinton judges was totally appropriate, but the Democrats' filibuster of 10 nominations is wholly inappropriate.

What difference does it make if you filibuster a nominee on the Senate floor or simply refuse to grant them a hearing or schedule a floor vote? How do you know that the 50+ Clinton nominees who never received such a hearing or floor vote didn't have majority support? For that matter, how could you know? You never gave them a hearing!

And what is so magical about making it out of committee on a party line vote? Why does that entitle someone to confirmation on the floor? The GOP has reversed all of the rules that they put in place during the Clinton administration to prevent his nominees from making it out of committee and now that all of Bush's nominees are assured of making it out of committee, somehow simply making it out of committee alone means they are entitled to confirmation.

For the record, senators can't give advice and consent if nominees aren't given hearings. And if providing that advice and consent is such an important constitutional duty, it must have only recently become one because it certainly wasn't when Clinton was making the nominations.