Well, to be honest, I’m sure the humor I saw in the NYT’s editorial last Sunday, “The Center Can Hold,” was purely unintentional, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.
The edit refers to the recent Senate deal on judicial nominations, which the NYT curiously describes only as ” deal to save the filibuster.” The NYT airily dismisses the obligation to filibuster only in “extraordinary” circumstances as mere weightless fluff, since “it is up to each of the 14 senators” to decide what extraordinary means. The implication is that they can’t be wrong. A deeper implication is that the NYT believes that the 7 Republicans who agreed must be dunces for signing on to such a deal or that they’re not “moderates” at all but functional Democrats.
Consistent with that definition of the deal, the edit begins by asserting:
The bipartisan “gang of 14” that struck a deal to save the filibuster could start to be a powerful force for centrism on the most divisive issue on Capitol Hill – judicial nominations. But for that to happen, moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chafee and John McCain need to do two things: stick to their promise not to allow the filibuster to be eliminated and vote against the worst of President Bush’s judicial nominees.
What do the Democrats have to do? Good question. I didn’t see the answer in the edit.
But note the NYT’s belief in the principle that the filibuster is a good thing, and must be saved. Of course it didn’t always honor that principle. As the NYT itself acknowledged last March (HatTip to Jim Miller),
A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the “nuclear option” in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton’s early agenda. But we were still wrong.
Now, let me see a show of hands by all of you who believe the NYT will stick to its new reverence for the filibuster when the Democrats next take over the Senate. {Pause} Funny, I don’t see any.
Here’s another big principle the NYT has just endorsed: Senators should take polls and vote on judicial nominations according to the wishes of their constitutents in their states:
The moderate Republicans who signed the agreement have done the country a service by preserving the filibuster, but they need to do more….
There was, however, an encouraging sign that the days of Republican rubber-stamping could be waning. It was gratifying to see Senators Snowe and Collins from Maine and Senator Chafee from Rhode Island vote against William Pryor, another troubling nominee. We hope that they will vote more often in the future to oppose nominees who are radically out of step with the majority of voters in their states. (Emphasis added)
To be consistent, shouldn’t Democratic Senators from states carried by President Bush follow this advice and vote to approve the president’s nominees, at least if polls suggest that a majority in that state support his nominees? What if Kerry had won Ohio, and hence the election (thus reviving liberal support for the Electoral College)? He would then have carried, if I’m counting correctly, 20 states. In that event, should the Senators from the other 30 states have opposed President Kerry’s judicial nominees if a majority of their constitutents regarded them as “out of step” with their values?
Let me see another show of hands…. Oh, forget it, as I’m sure the NYT editors will forget their devotion to these principles when the Dems next take over.
