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Krugman:
Stating the Obvious @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/opinion/27KRUG.html Further evidence below that there
are those True Believers who are going to do just that. Will we let them? - KWC For
Partisan Gain, Republicans Decide Rules Were Meant to Be Broken By Adam Cohen, NYT Editorial Observer, May
27, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/opinion/27TUE4.html There was a lot not to like about the new Congressional
district lines Republicans tried to push through in Texas this month, the ones that
made Democratic legislators flee to Oklahoma to prevent a vote. Democratic Austin was sliced into four parts and
parceled out to nearby Republican districts. A community on the Mexican border and
one 300 miles away were painstakingly joined together and declared to be a
single Congressional district. But
the real problem was that Republicans were redrawing lines that had just been
adopted in 2001, defying the rule that
redistricting occurs only once a decade, after the census. The Texas power grab is part of a trend. Republicans, who now control all three
branches of the federal government, are not just pushing through their
political agenda. They are increasingly ignoring the rules of government
to do it. While the
Texas redistricting effort failed, Republicans succeeded in enacting an equally
partisan redistricting plan in Colorado.
And Republicans in the Senate — notably those involved in the highly
charged issue of judicial confirmations — have been just as quick to throw out
the rulebook. These partisan attacks on the rules of government may be
more harmful, and more destabilizing, than bad policies, like the $320 billion
tax cut. Modern states, the German
sociologist Max Weber wrote, derive their legitimacy from "rational
authority," a system in which rules apply in equal and predictable ways,
and even those who lead are reined in by limits on their power. When the rules of government are
stripped away, people can begin to regard their government as illegitimate. The Texas redistricting effort was part of a national
Republican effort to shore up the party's 229-to-205 House majority going into
the 2004 elections. The House
majority leader, Tom DeLay, who traveled to Austin to supervise the effort
personally, was blunt about his motives: "I'm the majority leader, and I want more seats." Texas Republicans seized control of the
Legislature last year, and they thought they could add five or more Republican
Congressional seats. When the
Democrats took off for Oklahoma, the Department of Homeland Security helped
hunt down a plane filled with escaping legislators. Sixteen members of Congress from Texas wrote to Attorney
General John Ashcroft asking him whether there had been "attempts to
divert federal law enforcement resources for private political gain." In Colorado, Republicans succeeded this month in redrawing
the state's Congressional lines, which had been duly redrawn after the 2000
census. Republican state
legislators, under the guidance of the presidential adviser Karl Rove, added
thousands of Republicans to a district that Bob Beauprez, a Republican, won
last year by just 121 votes, and excluded the Democrat who nearly beat him from
the district. Democrats have gone
to court, charging that Republicans violated Colorado's Open Meetings Law and
legislative rules when they sneaked the plan through. In the judicial battles in the Senate, Republican leaders,
frustrated that Democrats have rejected a handful of Bush nominees, have
declared war on longstanding Senate rules. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has dispensed with procedures that allow senators to
exercise their constitutional "advice and consent" function,
in one case holding a single hearing for three controversial nominees, and he
has stifled legitimate inquiry.
When Senator Charles Schumer tried to ask one nominee about his legal
beliefs, Senator Hatch snapped that he was asking "stupid questions." The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has declared that
filibusters, which allow senators to block action with just 41 votes, should
not be used to reject judicial nominations, despite a history of using them to
do just that. Abe Fortas was
prevented from becoming chief justice in 1968 by a Republican-backed filibuster. While Senator Frist pushes
"filibuster reform," Senate Republicans are also talking about a
"nuclear option," in which Vice President Dick Cheney would preside
over the Senate and hand down a ruling that
Rule 22, which permits filibusters, does not apply to judicial
nominations. The Republicans' attack on the rules come
at a time when they could easily afford to take a higher road.
They have, by virtue of their control of the White House and Congress,
extraordinary power to enact laws and shape the national agenda. And this administration is already
getting far more of its judges confirmed, and more quickly, than the Clinton
administration did. Weber, in writing about rules, was concerned about what
factors kept governments in power.
That is not a concern in the United States — there is no uprising in the
offing. But when Americans see
their government flouting the rules, as they did during Watergate, they respond
with cynicism. In these hard times — with threats from abroad and a sour
economy at home — our leaders should be
bringing the nation together not by demonizing foreign countries, but by
instilling greater faith in our own. They should be showing greater reverence for the rules of
government, and looking for other ways — like tougher campaign finance laws —
to assure Americans that their government
operates evenhandedly. How likely is that?
The word in Texas is that Republicans may try their redistricting plan
again. Senate Democrats are
bracing for Senator Frist's "filibuster reform," or the "nuclear
option." And Mr. DeLay recently revealed how he felt about rules of
general applicability. When he
tried smoking a cigar in a restaurant on federal property, the manager told him
it violated federal law. His response, according to The
Washington Post, was, "I am the federal government." Outgoing mail
scanned by NAV 2002 |
