At the conclusion of the marathon debate of nearly 40 hours which
Republicans engineered over the question of some of President Bush's
nominees to the Circuit Courts of Appeal, Pennsylvania's Senator Rick
Santorum said he believes that it is now clear that from here on out it will
take 60 votes to confirm a federal judge. Thus, he promised that at such
time as he or a future Senator might serve under a Democrat President,
activist judges nominated by that President will be stopped by at least 41
GOP Senators.

That is what Santorum believes came of the around the clock session which
last two nights and a day and parts of two other days. The Senator followed
his conclusion by pleading with his Democrat colleagues to put the genie
back in the bottle. He said if the Democrats would just allow up or down
votes on nominees, then the historic posture of the Senate in not engaging
in filibusters against judicial nominees would continue. Otherwise, Santorum
said, we will have filibusters as far out as the imagination can comprehend.

As someone who urged this approach time and again on the Majority
leadership, I believe something else was accomplished. I believe the nation
knows that these judicial nominees are an issue.
True, the way the talk-a-thon was conducted, liberal Democrats got almost
half the time. It gave them the opportunity to confuse things and to
misrepresent what Republicans had done on judges during the Clinton
Administration.

As someone who ran the organization who led the way in urging Republicans to
stop some of Clinton's worst nominees, I can affirm that they did not
filibuster any nominees. Why then the cloture votes? Those were just held
(and there was only one vote per nominee) to clear away the "holds" which
Senators had placed on certain nominees. Cloture was obtained in every case,
so all of Clinton's nominees that made it out of committee received an up or
down vote. One of his nominees was actually defeated by the Senate.

As to nominees left in committee, it needs to be said that Bill Clinton, at
the end of his eight years in office, had named close to half the federal
judiciary. He got a higher percentage of his judicial nominees confirmed
than did either Presidents Reagan or Bush '41. In fact, Reagan and Bush
together had 12 years in office and combined they had only a small
percentage more of their judges confirmed than Clinton did in eight years.

Democrats had a huge sign up with 163 to 4 on it, giving out the misleading
view that 98% of Bush's nominees have been approved. This debate was not
about trial judges, or federal district court nominees. It was about
nominees to the Courts of Appeal. As soon as the talk-a-thon was finished,
there were three more cloture votes, so Democrats were then formally
filibustering six. But wait, there's more. Democrats have served notice that
they intend to filibuster six more, so the number being opposed is really 12
so far. Moreover, that's 12 out of a total of 41 nominees. Those are pretty
significant numbers. Republicans should have had a counter sign to call
attention to the real issue.

Anyway, I heard and saw a good deal of the news coverage on the event. It
was a success. Before this, Republicans complained and complained about the
tactics of the liberals and they got no coverage. This time radio and
television networks did cover the issue, even though they also gave ample
coverage to the liberals whining about how this time should have been spent
on health care, jobs bills and the minimum wage.

Meanwhile talk radio and the Internet went wild. This was a hot topic all
over the nation.

It also accomplished something else. Senators such as Rick Santorum, Lindsay
Graham (R-S.C). , Jon Kyl (R-Az.), John Cornyn (R-Tx.) and even Majority
Leader Bill Frist got great national exposure. They are an impressive lot
and Santorum, in particular, emerged as an important national figure. He is
Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, so he is already part of the
leadership, but clearly the national media is going to pay much more
attention to him.

I believe Republicans, who have been totally united on the judges issue,
have now set up a framework for the liberal filibuster to be seen as an
important matter. At minimum, it has set up this issue for 2004. At
maximum, it may have even created demand for the "nuclear option" where
Senators will simply insist that what the liberals are doing is
unconstitutional and will proceed to confirm these nominees.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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The Debt To the Penny

11/12/2003 $6,871,667,152,822.78