Ratcheting our way to kleptocratic dictatorship, one step at a time: The HuffPo reports that Senate Democrats used a rule-breaking tactic to advance two judicial nominees because Republicans themselves had done the exact same thing twice. Sen. Judiciary Committee chairman Durban called the rule breaking just a matter of following the Republican “precedent.”
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had full-blown meltdowns on Thursday after Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) held votes on two of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees without allowing debate on them, saying he was simply following the “new precedent” established by Republicans when they did the same thing to Democrats, twice.
Durbin appeared to completely blindside Republicans by moving straight to votes on two U.S. District Court nominees, Mustafa Kasubhai and Eumi Lee, without opening up the floor for discussions on them. Both nominees had two previous hearings and had been debated. But typically the panel would still allow for more discussion in what was their confirmation hearing.
“The two preceding chairs of this committee violated the letter and spirit of Committee Rule IV,” Durbin said, referring to a committee rule that requires at least one member of the minority to vote with the majority to end debate on a matter before moving to vote on it.
Durbin said one former chair, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), violated this rule with a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was chair when he broke the rule to advance a partisan immigration bill without Democratic input.“In doing so, Republicans established a new precedent that I followed on one occasion last Congress and will follow again today,” said the Illinois Democrat. “I’ve said time and again there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and a different set for Democrats.”
If I recall right, Senate Republicans when Obama was in office were blocking all judicial nominees, even though they did not control the Senate. The Dems could not get even one judge confirmed. So, Dems changed the rule to confirm a trial and appeals court nominees. The Dems left intact the existing rule for confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
After they got back in control of the Senate, radical Republicans got their revenge. They (1) refused to allow Obama's nominee Merrick Garland to even get a hearing, and (2) removed the rule for Supreme Court judges. That allowed authoritarian radical Senate Republicans to bulldoze onto the court three corrupt, radical right authoritarian Christian nationalist plutocrats. Those three extremists are the radical Gorsuch, the sex predator Kavanaugh, and the Christian nationalist freak Barrett.
One can see where this is going. The toxic act-react ratchet keeps moving the Senate and American politics generally away from bipartisanship and pro-democracy compromise. It pushes us toward single party rule and some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism or tyranny.
In my firm opinion, this one-way trek to kleptocratic dictatorship hell is inevitable because the Republican Party has radicalized and become authoritarian. Unless absolutely necessary, the GOP no longer cooperates, compromises or even respects inconvenient fact or truth. For the modern radicalized GOP, winning power and wealth is everything. Democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law just get in the way.
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The House voted 311-114 today to expel George Santos, with 105 Repubs voting to expel him.
The main reasons were criminal indictments against him, and House ethics rules prohibiting misuse of campaign funds and various alleged crimes. The Hill comments:
Once seen as a GOP trailblazer, Santos is facing federal indictment on 23 counts of wire fraud, identity theft and other campaign finance charges, and many Republicans came to view him as a drag on the party’s image and a liability heading into a tough election cycle where control of the House is up for grabs.
Santos has consistently pointed out that he has only been charged and not convicted.
“It starts and puts us in a new direction, a dangerous one, that sets a very dangerous precedent for the future,” Santos said on the House floor Tuesday. “Are we to now assume that one is no longer innocent until proven guilty, and they are in fact guilty until proven innocent? Or are we now to simply assume that because somebody doesn’t like you, they get to throw you out of your job.”
People voting against expelling Santos argued this would set a bad or dangerous precedent for the reasons Santos himself raised in his defense. Sadly, that is spot on true. The concern is about political self-preservation. Lots of Repubs probably have skeletons in the closet and want more protection for their jobs in case they get caught and whacked. If this serves as precedent, then the ratchet can be fired up any time some politician in the House gets incited for committing one or more crimes. The overwhelming moral concern appears to be political self-preservation, not defense of voters or democracy.
Only one news report about Santos today that I've seen even mentioned the fact that Santos got elected to office on the basis of his slew of jaw-dropping lies and fantasy stories. Voters were deceived and screwed out of a knowing choice. Among the news reports I saw, only one person who was reported to raise the concern that Santos lied to me. That complaint was raised by an irate Santos constituent, not any news media I'm aware of and not any politician. That fact of screwed voters was not very important, at least for the politicians who voted not to expel. For those people, lying to voters is not grounds for expulsion.
Santos should have been expelled as soon as the scope and depth of his lies and deceit of voters became clear and undeniable. In other words, deceiving voters and screwing them out of an informed choice is not major a moral concern for the politicians here. Even the people who voted to expel were focused on Santos’ bad criminal actions, not playing immoral dirty tricks on voters. Or, if some politicians who voted to expel were concerned about screwed voters, it wasn't reported much or at all.
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