I had the chance to attend the event at USD on Tuesday with former Senator Tom Daschle. My fellow bloggers here at SDP have already commented on several aspects of the speech itself.
The aspect of Daschle's speech that I found most interesting wasn't covered by any press. Daschle was asked to comment on the Republican's attempt to monopolize the political process by gaining control of the judiciary as well as the executive and legislative branches.
Daschle answered by commenting that he had taken a lot of heat in the campaign for his use of the filibuster. Filibuster in his opinion should not be looked at as a dirty word. The founding fathers knew there would be a potential for tyranny of the majority so they put procedures like the filibuster in place to control it. Daschle then switched gears and talked about the history of the filibuster. In the first 100 years of existence our government had no means to invoke cloture so members of Congress were free to speak forever with no means of ending the discussion. Later it was determined that this method was not good for the legislative process so 67 votes was made the magic number that would invoke cloture and end a filibuster.
At this point Daschle torpedoed his own argument. He said in the 1960's during George McGovern's time in the Senate the number of votes necessary to invoke cloture was lowered from 67 votes to 60 votes. This was done because Congress didn't want Southern Senators filibustering Civil Rights legislation. Today people want to lower the number of votes on judicial nominees to 51 votes which would leave the minority with no protection against the majority.
My reaction to these comments was to scratch my head while a whole bunch of people cheered probably not realizing what Daschle had said. If the majority viewpoint is something that Daschle agrees with, like Civil Rights legislation, then he has no trouble lowering the votes necessary to invoke cloture. If the minority viewpoint is something he disagrees with, like the President's judicial nominees, then we need to do whatever it takes to ensure the minority position is protected.
This scenario reminded me of Chief Justice Rehnquist's famous quote in Arnett v. Kennedy. "Sometimes you have to take the bitter with the sweet." If Daschle wants to argue the filibuster is necessary to protect minority viewpoints he should stand firm and advocate the protection of all minority viewpoints not just the ones he agrees with.
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