Bust Baucus

Senator Max Baucus says (D-Mont) he'll vote for John Roberts. [AP/Billings Gazette]

Call Baucus and let him know what you think of his decision. Start by asking Sen. Baucus why he timed his announcement to undercut Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's statement that he would not vote for Roberts. As Armando says, "Baucus demonstrates a healthy disrespect for his Leader in the Senate and for the values and principles that define the Democratic Party."

It's time for Democrats to pull together and demand party discipline. It's time we stopped coddling the backstabbers. Discipline and punish, people. Discipline and punish.

Contact Info for Baucus
Washington D.C.(202) 224-2651
Billings (406) 657-6790
Bozeman (406) 586-6104
Butte (406) 782-8700
Great Falls (406) 761-1574
Helena (406) 449-5480
Kalispell (406) 756-1150
Missoula (406) 329-3123

Update: Chris Bowers has more on Baucus' long history conflicting loyalties.

Comments

[Chris O.]

From what I've seen, too much is being made of this. CNN

[Chris O.]

Whoops. Like I was saying, CNN says that Reid asked everyone to lay off commenting until after the hearings were done and there was a meeting about it, and they did. Should we really be judging this as a betrayal of Reid so easily? And did we expect Nelson and Baucus and a fair number of other Democrats not to vote for Roberts? Is it really so bad to vote for someone almost certainly better than the man he is replacing?

I'd also be interested in knowing the impact of a person calling Great Falls to complain when they're over a thousand miles away and might very well not be able to place Great Falls within 100 miles on a map.

[razor]

discipline, punish, and lose elections, thereby losing the power to discipline and punish while handing over the power of the State to the Confederate Republican parasite competition.

Read the polls. They are reality based.

[Michael Ausbrook]

Great blog, but . . . so now the story is about loyalty among Dems--or lack thereof--even if Roberts is wholly unobjectionable? Not someone I'd choose--he will make four justices from the D.C. Circuit, for one thing. And I'm pretty sure there will be a slew of Roberts opinions that I won't be too happy about. But then explain Ginsburg's flip in the two parts of Booker.

One way to set the tone for the next nomination is to keep quiet about this one while sharpening the knives . . . just in case the next nomination presents "an extraordinary circumstance." Which she or he well might.

[scarshapedstar]

Michael,

One way to set the tone for the next nomination is to keep quiet about this one

Really? I urge you to consider the words of Ben Franklin, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." This sounds like the great Democratic response that brought us the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the Swiftboat fiasco....... oh, not to mention it doesn't matter and even if Harry Reid rolls over on his back and urinates on his belly while voting to confirm Roberts it will be spun by the Republicans as an act of obstructionism and/or treason.

[Thad]

even if Roberts is wholly unobjectionable?

Nobody here believes Roberts is wholly unobjectionable. He deserves to be rejected on Hamdan alone.

[Eli]

I second Thad on the assessment that "wholly unobjectionable" seems like a strange way to characterize Roberts. That said, I think a lot of the uneasiness on this is confusion on behalf of many people, including myself, about what is really expected by the anti-Roberts drum beaters. I certainly think as many Democrats (and Republicans) as possible should vote against confirmation. But when people start talking about "winning" on this one, it freezes me up a little - because we aren't going to win, and I can't figure out what they're getting at. Can someone help me out?

[Eli]

To expand on that, I think it's stretching anyone's credibility to claim that Bush's Social Security dismantling was blocked because Democrats stuck together. Democrats stuck together because it was so easy to do so, because the plan was horrible, and had serious Republican opposition, and pissed on a program many Americans not only value but look at as one of the prime examples of what government can do for its people. Party discipline is a useful and necessary tool, but it's not the Arrow of Apollo.

[Battlestar Galactica hollaaaaaa]

[mds]

But when people start talking about "winning" on this one, it freezes me up a little - because we aren't going to win, and I can't figure out what they're getting at.

Well, I don't think we can "win" on Roberts. What we can do, however, is use the loss to make a point ("win" on public opinion), or else we've already lost the next one. "Keeping our powder dry" is code for "never." Vote "yes" on Roberts, and you've just said it's okay for a nominee not to concretely answer any questions of substance, it's okay for the White House to refuse the release of relevant documents on the nominee, and it's okay to give the impression that the rightists threatening to link every Senate Democrat to "pornographers" are actually scaring us. If the Dems want any leverage whatsoever with the next SCOTUS nominee, who will be anywhere from social conservative to batshit insane, then they have to show they can marshall 40 "no" votes on Roberts. That's the ONLY bargaining chip they have, nuclear option notwithstanding. And Schumer, Baucus, and now Leahy are pissing it away, because they want to save it for the next fight...which will never come, because they'll screw the American people that time, too. Perish the thought that a Senate Democrat could cast a vote on principle, despite being so hurtfully accused of obstructionism.

[Niels Jackson]

Just a note:

1. It is false to say that Roberts did not answer any questions of substance.

2. It is silly to blame the White House for not releasing papers from the Solicitor General's office, when every living Solicitor General (Democrat and Republican) has said that such papers are always confidential. Anyway, there were some 80,000 documents available from Roberts' government service, and Democrats know damn well that the SG documents are in all likelihood nothing more than legal analysis of how to present various Supreme Court arguments and briefs (all of which would themselves be public). The Senate Democrats would have a better point on this if they weren't so outraged whenever any of their own documents are revealed to the public eye (i.e., the memos showing that they were blocking Estrada because he was "Hispanic," that they were manipulating the confirmation hearings so as to influence pending federal cases, etc.)