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Damn You, Democrats!

Alito had to be filibustered!

 

 

Okay, so the Alito confirmation process was possibly the greatest political sham in American history.  The entire sequence of events was a political certainty from the moment Alito was nominated.  There has rarely been so much ado about nothing.

 

But it gave Republicans the opportunity to trot out their mind-numbingly shortsighted arrogance.  As Democrats pointlessly protested Alito’s assured rise to the Supreme Court, Republicans were simply mystified that we’d have a problem with this guy.

 

Joe Republican: Alito is a good judge.  He knows the law.  He’ll interpret the Constitution in accordance with the founders, without regard to his personal beliefs.  How can you democrats oppose him?

 

Are you suggesting that the Supreme Court isn’t a political body?  That there isn’t something political at the very core of all constitutional interpretation?  C’mon.  Don’t give me that crap.

 

There’s no way to remove the politics.  The way you interpret the Constitution determines the way you view the issues, and the way you view the issues determines the way you view the Constitution—the two are inseparable.  That’s why the left and right can live in totally separate ideological worlds and still turn to the same document to justify their beliefs.

 

I’m sick of listening to conservatives try to get around this by saying that their method—strict constructionism—is the “correct” method because it sticks to the letter of the Constitution.  This is somehow “purer” because…I don’t know…because it always seems that conservatives get what they want when it’s applied.  We liberals, meanwhile, see the Constitution as a living document, designed to grow and change.  We think it’s reasonable to apply the basic principles outlined in the Constitution to unrelated areas.  Hell, we think that’s why the founders set up the Court in the first place.  And our method is the better one, we say…because…  Because when it’s applied, we get what we want.

 

So don’t bullshit yourself.  The Supreme Court is a political body.  It never could’ve been anything else.  The split between liberal and conservative permeates every institution in this country; not even the Supreme Court can escape it.

 

And would it bother anyone, my Republican friends especially, if we simply admitted this?  Would the world fall to pieces if we accepted that Supreme Court nominations are a political process, with political power to be gained and lost on both sides?

 

Maybe it would. 

 

But anyway, back to my point.  Which is: Democrats are pussies.

 

More accurately, they’re corrupt, power-hungry office-seekers, who just refused to commit political suicide even though they absolutely had to. 

 

This really confuses Republicans, so let me explain:

 

See, all those things you hate—like abortion, affirmative action, privacy rights, taxing the rich more than the poor, regulating businesses, cleaning up the environment—those things matter to us.  We believe they’re critical to sustaining a just and equitable society.  We admit—or at least I do—that these big bureaucratic public systems don’t work all that well, but we believe there is merit in the idea of them, and a critical need to keep them alive.

 

And much of what we cherish has been upheld by 5-4 decisions in which Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote.  Swapping O’Connor for Alito poses a serious risk to the America we want to live in—the one we think is right and just.

 

Okay, so maybe the hype is a little much.  Maybe this new, right-leaning court won’t automatically wipe out forty years of what we liberals call “progress.”  The Supreme Court and radical change don’t generally go hand in hand.  Still, the potential exists for Alito’s confirmation to be a watershed moment in American history, when one concept of America dies and another, to us much scarier version, rises. 

 

Suffice it to say—there was a hell of a lot riding on this for us.

 

And you would think, you know, that your elected representatives—what few we have anymore—would stand up for you at a time like that.  We had one chance to prevent what many of us fear will be the destruction of our nation’s soul: the filibuster.  It was a very risky, very dangerous choice, and with the “nuclear option” lurking in the background, even it may not have worked—but it was the only real chance we had to stop this.

 

But save for a handful of democrats, nobody had the guts to even suggest attempting a filibuster.  There can be only one explanation for this: Democrats are whores.

 

I mean I always knew politicians were power-hungry bastards, but I figured most of them had some kind of ideological core—meaning there would be some things they’d have to stand up for, no matter what.  I understand that as a political party, you have to pick your political battles.  I forgave the democrats for allowing so many conservatives onto the lower courts.  The fights made us look like bad, and we were trying to win some seats and maybe a presidency down the road.  But when Alito was nominated, I was sure they’d rally together to stop him.  It was one of those battles we simply had to fight.

 

But we didn’t, because power was more important to them than principle.

 

With public sentiment about the Iraq war flagging, and a more general dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration settling in, democrats were beginning to see an opportunity to turn things around.  Win some seats—maybe win back the Senate.  Maybe even find a way to win the Presidency.  In trying to gain momentum, the last thing we wanted to do was make ourselves look like obstructionists.  There’s no question that attempting to filibuster the Alito nomination would’ve made us look bad.  It might well have jeopardized whatever chance we have of taking back the government.

 

But I ask you—so what?  We had no choice here.  We had to do everything possible to stop this, period.

 

It’s like knowing your baby is in a burning building and having your boss tell you you’ll lose out on a big promotion if you run inside the building.  I mean—that’s not even a choice.  You go inside the building and save your baby, period.  And yes, this is an outrageously stupid analogy, but that’s pretty much what democrats were facing.  And somehow, they decided to let the baby burn to death.  That’s the kind of repulsive whores they are.

 

And so now, even if we do win back Congress…even if we do win the Presidency…even if we managed to maintain power for an entire generation, the foundation of what we believe America should and must be may fall to the wayside as the Supreme Court slowly dismantles liberalism one decision at a time.  So I ask you, democrats: What’s the point?  Why don’t we just fold our tent and let the Republicans run the country forever?  Since we’ve just assured ourselves that everything we try to do will be wiped out by the court for generations to come, it hardly seems worth bothering to claim power.

 

Unless, of course, you view power as an end unto itself, in which case it doesn’t matter if you can accomplish anything—just as long as you hold office.  That’s the choice our democratic representatives made.  That’s how they betrayed us.

 

They ought to be ashamed, but after all this, it’s hard to think they’re capable of it.

 

 

 

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