Watching the successful filibuster last week by U.S. Senate Republicans considering the nomination of law professor Goodwin Liu for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one had to wonder if voter pressure helped keep Republican feet to the fire.
This was, after all, the first successful filibuster since 2005. It is a rare occurrence for Republicans to go that route even though they have watched their nominees continually torpedoed by Democrats over the years.
Indeed, the Democrats blocked ten of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in 2003, 2004, and 2005, and the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent Byron York noted the process had been engaged ten times more often by Democrats than by Republicans.
To voters, it looked as if the GOP rolled over every time they were stopped by Democrats. That is, until Liu’s nomination came up.
Liu, a 40-year-old University of California at Berkley law professor with the liberal leanings that generally go along with that, had been tapped by Barack Obama to head up the Department of Education’s transition for the new administration. In 2006, he had appeared before Congress to testify against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. At that time, Liu not only questioned but insulted Judge Alito’s record, testifying:
Those words, embracing a liberal’s viewpoint of America, were remembered five years later when Liu appeared before Congress for his own confirmation, and fueled concerns of whether someone with that mind-think could be fair and rational in his judgments from the bench.
Also of concern were opinions written in 2009 when Liu co-authored Keeping Faith With the Constitution in which he wrote that “constitutional interpretation must be informed by contemporary norms and circumstances, not simply by its original meaning.” The book was meant to counter what progressive liberals described as the “activist conservative legal movement that has sought to erode our enduring constitutional values,” which was ironic considering the liberal legal activist who wrote it.
The final vote was 52-43, leaving Democrats eight votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster. Alaskan Independent Lisa Murkowski did not vote with her Republican colleagues. Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Jim Webb, voted for cloture with their fellow Democrats, but Senator Webb stated that he would oppose Liu’s final confirmation vote.
If Obama isn’t happy with the process, he only needs to remember when he was a senator and tried unsuccessfully to filibuster Judge Alito.
At a time when scores of voters have educated themselves about the Constitution and have concern with liberal interpretations, along with pressure for the GOP to stand up to what some have considered liberal bullying in Congress, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that Republicans successfully filibustered this nominee. Perhaps those most surprised were Democrats who were used to Republicans turning the other cheek.
