A study led by a team of UNC-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt professors examining what “cultural dispositions” unite the Tea Party reaching some interesting conclusions about the political movement’s relationship with the Constitution. They simultaneouslyrevere the idea of the Constitution and hate much of what it actually says:
In our follow-up poll, 84% of those positive towards the TPM [Tea Party members] said the Constitution should be interpreted “as the Founders intended,” compared to only 34% of other respondents. Other respondents were also three times more likely not to have an opinion on the issue, highlighting the salience of the question for TPM supporters. Support for Constitutional principles is not absolute. TPM supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . . The Constitution – and Tea Party more generally – take on heightened symbolic value and come to represent a ‘way of life’ or a “world view” rather than a specific set of laws or policy positions.
Sadly, the study actually paints a much more reasonable picture of the Tea Party than the reality suggests. Amending the Constitution to literally write your own policy preferences into the document is very rarely a good idea, but it is also an entirely legitimate way of bringing about constitutional change. The Tea Party, however, seems more interested in simply asserting repeatedly and loudly that the Constitution already imposes their preferred policy outcomes on the country — and in ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Monday that he is giving Congress ten days to pass a constitutional amendment that would make raising taxes nearly impossible. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will do everything in his power to force the U.S. to default on its debts.
“Okay, in ten days you want to change the United States Constitution by two-thirds vote in both houses?” Matthews asked. “That’s what you’re demanding.”
“Yes,” Lee admitted. “If possible we can’t change the Constitution just in Congress but we can submit it to the states. Let the states fight it out.”
“You want the Democratic Senate, by a two-thirds vote, to pass a constitutional amendment or you want the house to come down?” Matthews pressed.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying and I’ve been saying this for six months,” Lee said.
Lee’s amendment would require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, making future tax hikes nearly impossible. He would also require spending to return to 1996 levels.
Watch this video from MSNBC’s Hardball, broadcast July 25, 2011.
Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed an odd way to end the debt ceiling crisis: Republicans will stop holding the economy hostage and effectively allow the debt ceiling to be raised without requiring any budget cuts, if Obama gives them 12 opportunities to bash his fiscal policies.
McConnell’s plan to accept political theater as an alternative to drowning the federal government in a bathtub does not please the far right, so they’ve once again fabricated anutterly nonsensical argument why something they don’t like is unconstitutional. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) laid out this argument last night on Fox News:
We will not hand over more power, which I think is unconstitutional, to President Obama to further manipulate our economy. You know, Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution spells out that Congress has the power of the purse strings, so this plan of McConnell’s I think makes no sense because it does cede power to our president and takes away that authority that is inherent in Congress to control the economic decisions that have to be made when it comes to debt.
Watch it:
Here we go again. When President Obama signed a health care law they don’t like, the far right immediately invented an utterly meritless constitutional argument against it. They don’t just support the House GOP’s plan to phase out Medicare, they embrace an absurd claim thatMedicare violates the Constitution. If a waiter brings these people a steak that is slightly overcooked, they demand that he take it back because it’s unconstitutional.
So it’s pretty obvious that Palin’s kneejerk attack on the McConnell plan is wholly without merit. First of all, the debt ceiling fight has absolutely nothing to do with whether Congress retains the “power of the purse strings.” Congress exercises this power by passing appropriation bills that authorize the executive branch to spend money, and President Obama is still forbidden from spending money in excess of a congressional appropriation regardless of whether or not we have a debt ceiling.
Similarly, there is absolutely nothing radical about Congress delegating authority to the executive branch. The power to delegate authority is one of Congress’ most well established powers, and it is the reason why federal agencies are allowed to both write regulations and administer funds. Without this power, a functioning federal government cannot exist.
There is no modern Supreme Court case striking down this kind of delegation of power from the legislature to the executive, and the Supreme Court permits such delegations so long as “Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and theboundaries of this delegated authority.” McConnell’s plan easily meets this test, it designates the president as the sole authority possessing the delegated authority. It allows him to raise the debt ceiling only in designated intervals and only if he proposes very specific spending cuts, and it places very strict limits on this authority. Because the president is forbidden to spend money in excess of a congressional appropriation, Obama’s delegated power to raise the debt ceiling would be limited by the amount of congressional appropriations.
During GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign announcement on Saturday, the former pizza executive took a moment to lecture the country on its need to “reread the Constitution”:
CAIN: We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. … And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop there, keep reading.Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!
Watch it:
Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in theDeclaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier.
In expounding upon the Constitution, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) rarely troubles with reading it. Her musings on the subject have earned her yet anotherPolitifact “pants on fire” award and ensured the employment of fact-checkers everywhere. Now, the Minnesota Independent reports that one American —a high school sophomore — wants to take the Congresswoman head on. Fed up with the “injustice” that Bachmann’s “politically expedient” inaccuracies serve to “women everywhere,” New Jersey 10th grader Amy Myers is challenging Bachmann to a public debate — or a basic “fact test” — on the Constitution:
As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted.The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter. [...]
Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education: I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.
Bachmann does have a law degree, but given the knowledge she’s displayed on the subject, the 10th grader stacks up pretty well.
With so many Republicans claiming that the Constitution can mean whatever they want it to mean, it should be no surprise that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) wants a piece of this action. Yesterday, Bachmann told a gathering of social conservatives in Iowa that if the courts insist on applying the Constitution’s requirement that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” to gay people, then Congress should strip federal judges of their power to hear marriage equality cases:
Something else that we can do to reinforce our pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-family agenda is to limit the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts . … At the federal level with what are called Article III courts, Article III of the United States Constitution, we can limit the subject matter that justices can rule on. We have it within our authority to decide what judges can rule on and what they can’t. Any time the people speak, they say with one voice that marriage is one man, one woman.
Watch it:
Bachmann is, of course, wrong about the public’s view of marriage equality — 53 percent of Americans believe that gay couples should not be denied their constitutional right to marry. It is also not entirely clear that Congress actually has the power to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing a marriage equality case, although Congress could prevent lower federal courts from hearing these lawsuits.
At the end of the day, however, Bachmann’s court-stripping plan is nothing less than an assault on the Constitution itself. Bachmann does not like the fact that the Constitution requires gay people to be afforded the same legal protections as everyone else, so she wants to hamstring the courts from according equal protection to all Americans.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has always had a loose relationship with the Constitution — his flagship proposal is a wildly unconstitutional bill stripping many Americans of their citizenship. Today, however, he took his belief that he alone has the power to rewrite the Constitution to a new level, telling right-wing talk show host G. Gordon Liddy that entirely uncontroversial insurance regulations violate the Constitution:
First of all [the Affordable Care Act] is unconstitutional. We can go through all of that component, Gordon, but, in the end, this trade off of giving up our personal decisions on what health insurance policy we choose to buy, what health insurance policy will be delivered to us because of market demands, and making decisions on doctors and tests and second opinions, as a whole list of things that are taken away from us under Obamacare. All of that, for what? So that we have a federal mandate that children must stay on our insurance until age 26? I want mine to grow up, as a matter of fact.
And then, going on down the line, preexisting conditions, the states can address that constitutionally far better than the federal government, and that’s how it should be addressed.
Listen:
It’s clear from King’s error-laden rant against the Affordable Care Act that he hasn’t actually read the bill. Among other things, the law does not “mandate” that children must stay on their parents insurance until age 26. The law gives young adults the option of remaining on their parents insurance, but leaves them perfectly free to choose another insurance provider.
King’s reading of the Constitution is even more off base. While a number of litigants have filed meritless lawsuits falsely claiming that Congress cannot require people to either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes, even Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) concedes that the Act’s provision forbidding insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions “fall[s] within Congress’s power, pursuant to the Commerce Clause, to regulate the interstate health insurance market.” If King’s position were ever adopted by the Supreme Court, it would mean that the entire insurance industry would be immune from federal regulation.
And that’s the least of the problems with King’s argument. King’s core argument — that only the states and not the federal government are allowed to regulate a national market — is straight out of the tenther playbook. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) recently made an identical argument to claim that federal child labor laws are unconstitutional, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also adopted King’s theory of the Constitution to claim that thefederal ban on whites-only lunch counters must be tossed out.
Ironically, King’s amateurish foray into constitutional law comes on the same day thatover 100 actual legal scholars signed a letter rejecting the absurd view that the Affordable Care Act violates the Constitution. As they explain, the only way to strike down the law is to “jettison nearly two centuries of settled constitutional law.” If King were smart, he would consider consulting with one of them before he exposes his constitutional ignorance once again on a national broadcast
M.C.L Comment: The Repugs didn't care about the constitution when Bush was pushing for the Patriot Act or wire taps on phones and going after people's emails. Now they care about what the constitution when they want health insurance companies to go back to the business of kicking sick people off the rolls.
It will cost taxpayers over $1 million dollars for Republicans to recite the entire United States Constitution on the House floor Thursday.
In a year when Republicans have promised to reduce wasteful spending, it is estimated that reciting the Constitution will cost $1,071,872.87 if it takes three hours to read the document.
"When one chamber of Congress is in session but not working, we the people still have to pay for members' salaries and expenses, and for their police protection, and for keeping their lights and phones and coffee machines on," Peter Keating explained to Vanity Fair.
"To get this estimate, I took the total FY 2011 costs for House salaries and expenses and House office buildings, then added half the costs of joint House-Senate expenses, the CBO, the Capitol Police and the Capitol power plant," he continued. "Then I divided that sum by 205, the number of days the House was in session last year, then divided again by 24 (the number of hours in a day) and multiplied by 3 (the estimated length in hours of members reading the Constitution)."
Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said on Tuesday that his party plans to cut $100 billion in spending this year. GOP leadership has said cuts to the US defense budget are out of the question, making key safety-net programs like Medicare, food stamps and Social Security the sole target of their legislative agenda.
"They humor people who are not expert or not fully cognizant," Kevin Gutzman, a history professor at Western Connecticut State University and conservative libertarian, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
"And then once they’ve humored them and those people go away, it’s right back to business as usual," he added. "It looks like this will be business as usual - except for the half-hour or however long it takes to read the Constitution out loud."
Along with cutting spending, Republicans have promised to scrap "job-killing" health care laws, crack down on illegal immigration, cut diplomatic and foreign aid funds, and investigate the Obama administration.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated a repeal of Obama's health reform laws would cost the US $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years.
Though Republicans said they will reduce spending by requiring cost-saving measures for all new fund outlays, they exempted a potential repeal of health care reform from the rule.
"They're going to employ budget gimmicks to try and hide the cost of their actions," Rep Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said during a press conference yesterday. "What they are going to try to do is engage in Enron-type accounting to say that when they try and move to repeal health care a week from tomorrow, that the hit on the deficit will not matter."
Yet, while most GOPers have remained carefully vague about how they view the Constitution, those few who have revealed their specific views leave little doubt why the rest of the party is keeping quiet. Their views are both dangerous and radical:
Minimum Wage: Although Goodlatte claimed not to know whether the minimum wage is constitutional, Thomas and many other prominentRepublicans believe that it is not.
Education: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) believes that all federal education programs — including Pell Grants and student loan assistance — are unconstitutional. And he is far from alone among GOP Members of Congress.
Ending Senate Elections: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) recently claimed that the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which allows voters to elect their own senators, “was a mistake.” Scalia agrees.
Ever since they decided to wrap themselves in the Constitution, most GOPers have gotten away with vague bromides expressing their love for the document without revealing what they actually think about the Constitution. Meanwhile, those few GOP officials who have gone on record with their views have consistently shown themselves to be extreme radicals. If a Member of Congress disagrees with Clarence Thomas that child labor laws are unconstitutional; or with Rand Paul that civil rights violate the constitution; or with Tom Coburn that all federal education programs should cease to exist, than they should say so. But they should no longer be given the option to keep their views secret.
M.C.L Comment: Let's be real these tea party twits don't give a damn about the constitution, where was this deep love for the constitution when George W.Bush and Dick Cheney were marking it with white out? The tea party is probably the biggest scam pulled on this country since those game shows being rigged back in the 1950s. The tea party movement is nothing more than well funded corporate front groups that's playing on their fringes on the political right.
You might say well that's nothing new Johnny C the corporate wing of the Republican Party have always managed to get their less informed counterparts to go along with policies that goes against them. But what adds more to this fiery hate you saw in the past two years not only the current president is a Democrat, he's black and he's not that stereotypical black man Rush tells them about. He's smart, capable and doing a kick ass job that's why the tea party hates him.
Not this bullshit story of them hating for government spending or raising taxes I'm making a prediction right now sane America will see the tea party is nothing a renamed brand of that fringe that have always been in the Republican Party.
By Ben Armbruster
Yesterday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Alaska GOP U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller suggested that both
Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. When Bob Schieffer wondered whether Miller’s ideas — that Social Security should be privatized and that Medicare should be phased out — were too extreme, Miller shot back, citing the Constitution. “I would suggest to you that if one thinks that the Constitution is extreme then you’d also think the Founders are extreme,” he said.
Today on ABC’s Top Line, host Rick Klein asked Miller to expound. “Do you think those programs are constitutionally authorized?” Miller dodged, first — noting that his parents benefit from Social Security and Medicare — arguing that they should be preserved now, but “transition” to a privatization model in the future. Then, Miller again suggested the programs are not constitutional:
MILLER: I think we have to look at transferring power back to the states in such a way that states can then look at solutions that may be more appropriate. Then ultimately, when you look at the Constitution and you evaluate what the plan was originally, it was for states to take on more power than the federal government, particularly in the areas of, such as those things that may promote the general welfare. It was not a federal role.
Later on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell asked if Social Security and Medicare are “legal” and “should be mandated” by Congress and again, Miller dodged, saying, “I do believe that the Constitution mandates that we transfer power from the feds back to the states.” Watch the compilation:
Miller’s claim that the Constitution gives states the sole power to provide for general welfare is exactly wrong. In fact, Article I, Section 8 specifically states:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
Miller appears to be embracing what the Wonk Room’s Ian Millhiser describes as “tentherism,” the belief adopted by many on the right that posits that progressive policies such as health care reform and entitlement programs are an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights.
Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn't care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists.
This hot-and-cold take on the Constitution is surprisingly common within the GOP, particularly among those like Broun who portray themselves as strict Constitutionalists and who frequently accuse Democrats of twisting the document to serve political aims.
Republicans have proposed at least 42 Constitutional amendments in the current Congress, including one that has gained favor recently to eliminate the automatic grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
Democrats — who typically take a more liberal view of the Constitution as an evolving document — have proposed 27 amendments, and fully one-third of those are part of a package from a single member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. Jackson's package encapsulates a liberal agenda in which everyone has new rights to quality housing and education, but most of the Democratic proposals deal with less ideological issues such as congressional succession in a national disaster or voting rights in U.S. territories.
The Republican proposals, by contrast, tend to be social and political statements, such as the growing movement to repeal the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship. Republicans like Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the lead Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, argue that immigrants are abusing the right to gain citizenship for their children, something he says the amendment's authors didn't intend.
Sessions, who routinely accuses Democrats of trying to subvert the Constitution and calls for respecting the document's "plain language," is taking a different approach with the 14th Amendment. "I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind," he said, "but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen."
Other widely supported Republican amendments would prohibit government ownership of private companies, bar same-sex marriage, require a two-thirds vote in Congress to raise taxes, and — an old favorite — prohibit desecration of the American flag.
During the health care debate, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, D-Mich., introduced an amendment that would allow voters to directly repeal laws passed by Congress — a move that would radically alter the Founding Fathers' system of checks and balances.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who founded a tea party caucus in Congress honoring the growing conservative movement that focuses on Constitutional governance, wants to restrict the president's ability to sign international treaties because she fears the Obama administration might replace the dollar with some sort of global currency.
Broun, who is among the most conservative members of Congress, said he sees no contradiction in his devotion to the Constitution and his desire to rewrite parts of it. He said the Founding Fathers never imagined the size and scope of today's federal government and that he's simply resurrecting their vision by trying to amend it.
"It's not picking and choosing," he said. "We need to do a lot of tweaking to make the Constitution as it was originally intended, instead of some perverse idea of what the Constitution says and does."
The problem with such a view, says constitutional law scholar Mark Kende, is that divining what the framers intended involves subjective judgments shaded with politics. Holding up the 2nd Amendment as sacrosanct, for example, while dismissing other parts of the Constitution is "cherry picking," said Kende, director of Drake University's Constitutional Law Center.
Virginia Sloan, an attorney who directs the nonpartisan Constitution Project, agreed.
"There are a lot of people who obviously don't like income taxes. That's a political position," she said of criticism of the 16th Amendment, which authorized the modern federal income tax more than a century ago. "But it's in the Constitution ... and I don't think you can go around saying something is unconstitutional just because you don't like it."
Sloan said that while some proposals to alter the Constitution have merit, most are little more than posturing by politicians trying to connect with voters.
"People are responding to the politics of the day, and that's not what the framers intended," she said. "They intended exactly the opposite — that the Constitution not be used as a political tool."
The good news, Sloan and Kende said, is that such proposals rarely go anywhere.
Since the nation's founding, just 27 have survived the arduous amendment process, and 10 of those came in the initial Bill of Rights.
Only two have come in the past 40 years, and both avoided ideology. One, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age to 18; the other, ratified in 1992, limited Congress' ability to raise lawmakers' salaries.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki blasted the Bay State’s health care reform created under former Gov. Mitt Romney today, telling the Herald it’s “unconstitutional.” He also conceded that Romney is “probably the (Republican) front runner” in the 2012 presidential election.
“I think the idea of what they call an individual mandate … is not just wrong, in all likelihood it’s unconstitutional,” Pataki told the Herald in a telephone interview today [...] Pataki, who would not rule out a 2012 presidential run, is kicking off his push to repeal health care reform at the Paul Revere park on Sunday. He’s started a non-profit called “RevereAmerica.org” and plans to tour campaign hot spots like Iowa and California. “We want to mobilize people who understand our freedom is at risk again and we have to wake up and reclaim our government,” said Pataki. He’s pushing to rake in $15 million for the campaign along with millions of signatures from congressional districts to show politicians where the average American stands.
Pataki’s comments come as a growing number of conservatives are beginning to question Romney’s ability to successfully distance himself from national health care reform, given its similarities to the Massachusetts plan he signed into law. Since President Obama signed the reform bill, Romney moved quickly to condemn the new law as an abuse of federal power, arguing that health care reform is a right reserved for the states. He has also defended the success of his own, very similar, proposal. Many conservatives, however, don’t believe that voters will make the distinction.
The conservative American Spectator is also warning Republicans that a Romney presidential bid could undermine any effort to repeal the national law. “Romney would not be able to credibly campaign against the national health care law,” Phillip Klein wrote today on the AmSpecBlog. “And as a result, were he the Republican nominee, it would kill the movement to repeal ObamaCare.”
Romney himself may even agree with Pataki. He has repeatedly praised the individual mandate for insuring 98% of all Massachusetts residents, but has also argued that the measure violates the sovereignty of the states. “I think it’s unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front,” he said last week.
By Faiz Shakir
The Tea Party movement loves to express its affection for the Constitution. The Los Angeles Times writes, “Adherence to what supporters deem to be a strict interpretation of constitutional principles is a key tenet of the tea party movement.” Yesterday’s Tea Party rally in Searchlight, NV, for instance, was filled with imagery of the Constitution. Protesters carried signs that read “I honor the Constitution” and “What about the Constitution don’t you understand?” Rally attendee Norman Halfpenny, a 77-year old retired Marine Corps veteran, said, “We need to get our Constitution back.”
In her speech at the rally, Sarah Palin of course paid homage to the Constitution. “Our vision for America is anchored in time-tested truths that the government that governs least governs best, that the Constitution provides the path to a more perfect union — it’s the Constitution,” she exclaimed. And so it’s extremely puzzling that Palin introduced this new attack line against President Obama yesterday:
In these volatile times when we are a nation at war, now more than ever is when we need a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor lecturing us from a lectern.
Ironically, the crowd cheered wildly at Palin’s line. Watch it:
Perhaps the Tea Partiers feel more comfortable with an “MBA President” who leads the country into economic and international crises.
Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or reputable constitutional scholar who believes that health reform is unconstitutional. Instead, they rely entirely on a study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a radical “tenther” organization which has endorsed the view that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), rebuts DeMint and Ensign’s constitutional claim by citing numerous constitutional scholars — including right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler — who all agree that health reform is constitutional. Moreover, as ThinkProgress has previously explained, even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with the tenther attack on health reform.
Sadly, DeMint and Ensign’s attempt to change the meaning of the Constitution by invoking a constitutional point of order is an all too familiar tactic. As CQ reports, Republicans often invoke this procedure to claim that bills they don’t like must therefore be unconstitutional. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently invoked the procedure to claim that a $200,000 federal grant to an Omaha, Neb. museum somehow violated the constitution. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used it to protest a bill to enfranchise D.C. residents.
Raising a constitutional point of order is also the first step to invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” an elaborate set of procedural maneuvers Republicans dreamed up while they were still in the majority, that effectively declare the filibuster unconstitutional. Indeed, despite the fact that Ensign and DeMint now claim the right to filibuster anythingthemajoritydoes, both senators believed the filibuster must be unconstitutional when it was being used against them. Ensign claimed that the Senate has a “constitutional obligation” to give President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees an “up-or-down” vote, and DeMint had even harsher words for Democratic senators who opposed majority rule:
The obstructionists should go to the Senate floor, make their arguments, allow senators to draw their conclusions on her nomination and then let us vote. If their arguments are so strong, they should be able to convince a majority to agree. Otherwise, they are simply smearing the integrity of a highly respected jurist to score political points against the president, at the expense of vandalizing the Constitution. . . .
There is a reason Americans elected George W. Bush and a large Republican majority in Congress. The majority of Americans trusted our judgment on judicial nominees. There is also a reason Democrats are in the minority. Most Americans did not trust them to make these decisions.
Now that DeMint and Ensign are in the minority, however, it simply must be the case that the Constitution protects minority obstructionism–and that bills opposed by the minority are unconstitutional.
