Conservative Hypocrisy

I have come to the realization that Republicans in both the House and Senate are a bunch of hypocrites. For the past several weeks the Senate Republicans have been squawking about judicial nominations and how the Democrats are going to use the filibuster to block Pres. Bush’s nominations. The Senate Republicans are threatening to use the so-called “nuclear option”, which, if used, will effectively blow-up the Senate. The ‘nuclear option” is what the Republicans are planning to use to change the rules of the Senate to block filibusters. Instead of 60 votes needed to end a filibuster, the Senate would only need a simple majority to cut off debate and have a vote. The Republicans would be able to approve the nominations of Pres. Bush’s activist judges. The Senate Republicans have been saying for weeks that the Senate Democrats have been blocking Pres. Bush’s nominees with just cause.

I did a little research and discovered that the Democrats have only blocked 3 nominees from reaching a vote, whereas they have allowed 173 nominations to be voted on. During the Clinton administration, the Senate Republicans blocked 60 of Pres, Clinton’s judicial nominations. The Senate Republicans used the same tactics the Democrats are now using. The Senate Republicans used the filibuster to great affect, blocking 60 nominations. Now the Republicans are screaming foul because the Democrats don’t care for 3 activist judges. Talk about being hypocrites.

The President and the Republicans have been hollering about judicial activism by liberal judges, yet, their goal is to nominate and gain approval for judges who are equally as activist, just activist for the conservative agenda. The Republicans are up in arms over the Teri Schiavo fiasco. They are accusing the State and Federal judges of being activists and not accepting the conservative argument about Schiavo parents needing more time to appeal. Even though it was a conservative Federal judge appointed by, none other than Ronald Reagan, who squashed all the appeals by the parents. In essence he said, there were no more legal paths for the parents. They had lost consistently over the course of 10 years and they were at the end of the road. The courts were consistent in their rulings, liberal minded judges as well as conservative minded judges.

I guess activism is all in the eye of the conservative. If the judge doesn’t support your point of view, or decides a case different than how you wanted, that judge is an activist and as Tom DeLay has said, “should be impeached.” The Republicans and their conservative supporters are hypocrites. The same arguments they are using against Democrats and liberal judges can be used against them. It is too bad our President and his cronies are “diviserators” and not “unificators”.