Republicans Decide Rules Were Meant to Be Broken
May 27, 2003
By ADAM COHEN
NY Times Editorialist
There was a lot not to like about the new Congressional
district lines Republicans tried to push through in Texas
this month, the ones that made Democratic legislators flee
to Oklahoma to prevent a vote. Democratic Austin was sliced
into four parts and parceled out to nearby Republican
districts. A community on the Mexican border and one 300
miles away were painstakingly joined together and declared
to be a single Congressional district. But the real problem
was that Republicans were redrawing lines that had just
been adopted in 2001, defying the rule that redistricting
occurs only once a decade, after the census.
The Texas power grab is part of a trend. Republicans, who
now control all three branches of the federal government,
are not just pushing through their political agenda. They
are increasingly ignoring the rules of government to do it.
While the Texas redistricting effort failed, Republicans
succeeded in enacting an equally partisan redistricting
plan in Colorado. And Republicans in the Senate - notably
those involved in the highly charged issue of judicial
confirmations - have been just as quick to throw out the
rulebook.
These partisan attacks on the rules of government may be
more harmful, and more destabilizing, than bad policies,
like the $320 billion tax cut. Modern states, the German
sociologist Max Weber wrote, derive their legitimacy from
“rational authority,” a system in which rules apply in
equal and predictable ways, and even those who lead are
reined in by limits on their power. When the rules of
government are stripped away, people can begin to regard
their government as illegitimate.
The Texas redistricting effort was part of a national
Republican effort to shore up the party’s 229-to-205 House
majority going into the 2004 elections. The House majority
leader, Tom DeLay, who traveled to Austin to supervise the
effort personally, was blunt about his motives: “I’m the
majority leader, and I want more seats.” Texas Republicans
seized control of the Legislature last year, and they
thought they could add five or more Republican
Congressional seats. When the Democrats took off for
Oklahoma, the Department of Homeland Security helped hunt
down a plane filled with escaping legislators. Sixteen
members of Congress from Texas wrote to Attorney General
John Ashcroft asking him whether there had been “attempts
to divert federal law enforcement resources for private
political gain.”
In Colorado, Republicans succeeded this month in redrawing
the state’s Congressional lines, which had been duly
redrawn after the 2000 census. Republican state
legislators, under the guidance of the presidential adviser
Karl Rove, added thousands of Republicans to a district
that Bob Beauprez, a Republican, won last year by just 121
votes, and excluded the Democrat who nearly beat him from
the district. Democrats have gone to court, charging that
Republicans violated Colorado’s Open Meetings Law and
legislative rules when they sneaked the plan through.
In the judicial battles in the Senate, Republican leaders,
frustrated that Democrats have rejected a handful of Bush
nominees, have declared war on longstanding Senate rules.
Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has
dispensed with procedures that allow senators to exercise
their constitutional “advice and consent” function, in one
case holding a single hearing for three controversial
nominees, and he has stifled legitimate inquiry. When
Senator Charles Schumer tried to ask one nominee about his
legal beliefs, Senator Hatch snapped that he was asking
“stupid questions.”
The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has declared that
filibusters, which allow senators to block action with just
41 votes, should not be used to reject judicial
nominations, despite a history of using them to do just
that. Abe Fortas was prevented from becoming chief justice
in 1968 by a Republican-backed filibuster. While Senator
Frist pushes “filibuster reform,” Senate Republicans are
also talking about a “nuclear option,” in which Vice
President Dick Cheney would preside over the Senate and
hand down a ruling that Rule 22, which permits filibusters,
does not apply to judicial nominations.
The Republicans’ attack on the rules come at a time when
they could easily afford to take a higher road. They have,
by virtue of their control of the White House and Congress,
extraordinary power to enact laws and shape the national
agenda. And this administration is already getting far more
of its judges confirmed, and more quickly, than the Clinton
administration did.
Weber, in writing about rules, was concerned about what
factors kept governments in power. That is not a concern in
the United States - there is no uprising in the offing. But
when Americans see their government flouting the rules, as
they did during Watergate, they respond with cynicism.
In these hard times - with threats from abroad and a sour
economy at home - our leaders should be bringing the nation
together not by demonizing foreign countries, but by
instilling greater faith in our own. They should be showing
greater reverence for the rules of government, and looking
for other ways - like tougher campaign finance laws - to
assure Americans that their government operates
evenhandedly.
How likely is that? The word in Texas is that Republicans
may try their redistricting plan again. Senate Democrats
are bracing for Senator Frist’s “filibuster reform,” or the
“nuclear option.”
And Mr. DeLay recently revealed how he felt about rules of
general applicability. When he tried smoking a cigar in a
restaurant on federal property, the manager told him it
violated federal law. His response, according to The
Washington Post, was, “I am the federal government.”