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GOP Survey Shows Few Plan to Stop Dems
23 minutes ago Politics - U. S. Congress
By JESSE J. HOLLAND and DAVID ESPO, Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON - Private Republican polling shows scant support for a plan to stop minority Democrats from blocking judicial nominees, officials said Thursday, as two of President Bush's most controversial appointments advanced toward a possible Senate confrontation.
These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a recent survey taken for Senate Republicans showed 37 percent support for the GOP plan to deny Democrats the ability to filibuster judicial nominees, while 51 percent oppose.
Additionally, the survey indicated only about 20 percent of Americans believe the Republican statement that Bush is the first president in history whose court appointees have been subjected to a filibuster, a tactic in which opponents can prevent a vote unless supporters gain 60 votes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, noting the survey data has not been made public.
Coincidentally, the polling was presented to GOP aides a few hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to send the nominations of Texas judge Priscilla Owen and California judge Janice Rogers Brown to the full Senate for confirmation. Bush picked Owen for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and Brown for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.
Cmon dude---haven't you heard---the GOP is gonna get killed in '06 AND '08SmarterThanYou said:good. the GOP can do just fine without these extremists on the bench.
SmarterThanYou said:good. the GOP can do just fine without these extremists on the bench.
freeandfun1 said:Explain their extremism. I keep hearing these charges, but no evidence. I also keep hearing how one was elected to the CA supreme court by 75% of the vote (as we know, CA is NOT a conservative state) and one received the backing of the majority of Texas democratic judges.
I guess being nominated by the GOP automatically means you are an extremist by many.
Kathianne said:Gonna be a bad second term, unless he learns to take some to the woodshed:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050422/ap_on_go_co/filibuster_fight_15
The Bolton Dirtfest
A mad hold-up.
Whatever else you think of him, John Bolton is a serious person. Democrats could have acted on their disagreements with President Bushs pick to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by making Boltons confirmation battle a discussion of, among other things, his well-formed views on enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention, or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or the International Criminal Court. Instead, they have gone after him with innuendo and misrepresentations.
Leading the way has been Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking minority member Joseph Biden, one of the Senates foremost authorities on taking himself seriously. He has been willing to shred his own credibility in taking the ax to Bolton. Consider his bad faith on procedural matters: Biden had assured Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar two weeks ago that if Boltons hearing was delayed a week for Pope John Paul IIs funeral, both the hearing and the committee vote would take place last week. But when it came time to vote last week, Democrats objected. When it came time to vote again this Tuesday, Democrats objected again, forcing Republicans to take extraordinary steps to even allow the committee to convene. When it did, Democrats caterwauled for an hour until Ohio Republican George Voinovich buckled and supported another three-week delay on the vote.
This gives Democrats more time to smear and jeer. On Tuesday, Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd said of Boltons conduct in a routine bureaucratic dispute a few years ago, This ought to be indictable. How ridiculous. Can we make senatorial hyperbole a federal offense? Biden at one point asked for a private hearing to air the allegations in a letter from a woman who said Bolton was abusive of her. Biden said he didnt want to harm Boltons reputation but according to the New York Sun, Bidens staff had already e-mailed the letter to journalists days earlier.The main charges against Bolton are de minimis. He is said to have intimidated a State Department intelligence analyst who objected to Boltons supposedly too-dire assessment of Cubas bioweapons program. But Bolton aide Fred Fleitz has testified that the analyst in question, Christian Westerman, wasnt straight with Bolton or his staff. It was Westermans responsibility to run language for a 2002 Bolton Cuba speech by the CIA, but when he did so he attached his own prejudicial language dissenting from Boltons views. When Fleitz learned this, Westerman falsely denied having done it, understandably leading to a confrontation in Boltons office. Two of Westermans supervisors subsequently apologized for how Westerman handled the matter.
well, he does seem to have developed a good open border policy with mexico. :cof:Sir Evil said:Big surprise! I'm amazed the guy was even re-elected when he can't do a damn thing right!
SmarterThanYou said:well, he does seem to have developed a good open border policy with mexico. :cof:
So you think he was re-elected for this policy? He was re-elected because of the WOT and because Kerry was a joke. People were not worried about the border policy because of congress.no1tovote4 said:I don't understand why people are so upset about this, it was one of his points that he made while running for the office.
Not just that, but now he's calling the american people 'vigilantes' because they are doing the job he won't.no1tovote4 said:However Bush seems to be ignoring all attempts to make him rethink his position, just as he has done in many other areas. It is just the conservatives that he is ignoring on this point.
SmarterThanYou said:So you think he was re-elected for this policy? He was re-elected because of the WOT and because Kerry was a joke. People were not worried about the border policy because of congress.
Exactly, leaving us attempting to cover our own asses against the will of 1 out of 3 of the branches of government, with the pressured ignorance of the 2nd and almost no input from the 3rd.Not just that, but now he's calling the american people 'vigilantes' because they are doing the job he won't.
no1tovote4 said:I don't understand why people are so upset about this, it was one of his points that he made while running for the office. However Bush seems to be ignoring all attempts to make him rethink his position, just as he has done in many other areas. It is just the conservatives that he is ignoring on this point. I remember when he first put forward the idea in his first term, the Dems didn't like it because it wasn't general amnesty, it wasn't enough in their minds to let them work here without becoming citizens regardless of how they entered the country.
Vice President Dick Cheney warned Democrats Friday that he will cast the tie-breaking vote to ban filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees if the Senate deadlocks on the question. Republicans are moving the Senate toward a final confrontation with Democrats over judicial nominations. Internal GOP polling shows that most Americans don't support Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan to ban judicial filibusters -- a tactic in which opponents can prevent a vote on a nomination with just 41 votes in the 100-member Senate.
SmarterThanYou said:If this rule change happens, watch the pendulum swing left quickly in 06 and 08. can you say 'hillary for prez'?
nightmare would be more like it.rtwngAvngr said:I guess you have to have a dream.
do you really believe that internal GOP pollstakers dont hear the message? And as far as I've heard from both sides, no argument has ever made it very far that removing the filibuster is unconstitutional, just a very bad idea.theim said:The Republicans' problem is that, basically, they have done a piss-poor job on getting their side of the story out. I'd be willing to bet that, right now, Average Joe Smith believes that the rule change would be unconstitional and that the constitution mandates a supermajority for judges. This is not the case. Someone has to do a better job of getting the message out.
