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Jewish World Review April 28, 2005 / 19 Nisan , 5765 Republican majority as victims By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
As if it needed another one, America has developed a new class of victims. They're called Republicans.
It used to be that the Republican Party was where you went when you were tired of the victim mentality peddled by liberals. Now it's where you go when you feel victimized by liberals.
To listen to the leaders of the GOP, their tormentors come in threes: the liberal media, left-leaning academics and what House Majority Leader Tom DeLay calls an "arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary."
When it comes to playing the victim, DeLay deserves an Academy Award. Speaking to religious conservatives during the Terri Schiavo ordeal, DeLay tried to relate the poor woman's ordeal to his own alleged ethical indiscretions and said that his political opponents were out to get him. Later, when the story broke that DeLay's wife and daughter had pocketed more than a half-million dollars by working for his political action committee, he could have pointed out that this is common practice in Washington. Instead, DeLay whined that his detractors in the media were trying to "embarrass" him.
It's a line he picked up again this week when he blamed his troubles on the "legion of Democrat-friendly press."
But it's the business about the judges that really showcased DeLay's victim mentality. The majority leader has since apologized for the "inartful way" in which he expressed his frustration over the reluctance of the federal judiciary to intervene in Schiavo's case and order the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube to be restored.
Inartful? More like insane. DeLay went ballistic over the Schiavo case, vowing: "The time will come when the men responsible for this will answer for their behavior."
That kind of talk was creepy enough to scare off some of DeLay's fellow Republicans. Vice President Dick Cheney vouched for the importance of an independent judiciary, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist distanced himself from DeLay's judicial jihad. Ditto for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy — both appointed by Republicans. The justices told a congressional hearing that criticism comes with the territory and that the independence of the judiciary is worth preserving.
Now it is Frist who is toying with the victim rhetoric. He plans to join Christian conservatives in a national telecast on Sunday intended to draw attention to what Republicans claim is an abuse of the filibuster rule by Senate Democrats. The way the religious right sees it, Democrats are victimizing "people of faith" when they oppose some of President Bush's judicial nominees. Frist and prominent religious leaders are planning to gather in Kentucky for a telecast to be distributed on the Internet and to churches around the country.
And it's not just conservatives in Congress who are whining. On a recent installment of "Fox News Sunday," conservative commentator William Kristol described efforts to filibuster judges as an attempt by Democrats to maintain control over the judiciary. After moderator Chris Wallace pointed out that most federal judges were appointed by Republican presidents, Kristol responded that those Republican presidents had too often deferred to the recommendations of the American Bar Association, which Kristol considers a left-leaning organization. So now the problem is the ABA?
It's not that Kristol doesn't have a point about where the group's political sympathies lie. And it's not that I'm unsympathetic to Republican concerns about how Democrats have treated some judicial nominees.
The president has a right to nominate whomever he wants to the bench, and it's an outrage that Democrats have — since Bush took office — denied 10 of his more than 200 nominees the courtesy of a vote. For that, Democrats should pay a political price in future elections, and they may well.
But that doesn't mean Republicans should resort to the so-called "nuclear option" of changing Senate rules to make it easier for them to break through judicial filibusters. If Republicans do that, they'll look desperate and out of arguments — or pretty much how Democrats look whenever they resort to filibusters in the first place.
Republicans should avoid emulating their opponents. This world-is-out-to-get-me routine is unappealing, and it's getting tiresome. Whenever Republicans hit a snag in pursuing their agenda, some of them immediately look for someone to blame. They should look in the mirror and ask what they could do differently. Instead, they're still acting as if they are powerless and in the minority.
Well, if this keeps up that may become the reality.
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
