Politics

Brit Hume: Democrats rush to the nuclear option shows their 2014 midterm pessimism

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” Monday, senior political analyst Brit Hume said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the so-called nuclear option so President Obama can fill courts with liberal judges.

By ending the minority party’s ability to filibuster certain presidential nominees, Hume told host Bret Baier, Senate Democrats can fulfill a liberal agenda of creating more left-leaning courts and jurisprudence.

“In invoking the so-called nuclear option to do away with filibusters on judicial and certain other presidential nominations, Senate Democrats did something both parties had previously threatened, but never done,” Hume said. “The reason they did it was simple. It was all about the judges — and specifically, as you heard, those who sit on the federal appeals court here in Washington. It is the most important appeals court in the land. It has jurisdiction over many of the regulatory agencies based here and its members are often leading candidates to ascend to the Supreme Court itself.”

“Democrats count on liberal judges on that appeals court for two purposes — one is to back regulations on the private sector, which they’re so fond of imposing,” Hume continued. “The other is to protect the legal rights such as abortion that the Supreme Court discovered in the Constitution during the heyday of liberal jurisprudence that ended largely around 1980. These regulations and rights are perpetually vulnerable politically in a nation where only 20 percent of people describe themselves as liberal. Thus, judges with lifetime appointments are crucial to the Democrat’s cause, which is why, despite the light workload of that appeals court here in Washington, they are so determined to fill vacancies while they still control the Senate. Until last week, they lacked the veto-proof majority to confirm Obama nominees. Blowing up the filibuster rule, which had stood for 225 years, took care of that.”

Hume added that while this likely won’t be something that will sway voters, it does show the Democratic Party lacks confidence in its 2014 midterm election prospects.

“I doubt that people will be voting on this issue,” Hume replied. “But it does tell you something about it, Bret. If the Democrats were confident that they would still hold the Senate in 2014, there wouldn’t have been so much urgency to do this and do it now and get it done before they either lost their majority or became even more vulnerable to a filibuster through a larger number of Republicans. I think they’re worried about 2014 and thought, ‘We’d better do this and do it now and we’ve got to fill as many of these appeals court vacancies as we can because if we don’t, the Republicans will, and then our agenda will be in great difficulty.’”

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