The other day, while criticizing the President and the war on terror, Tom Daschle stated:
“Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ask questions. We are not a rubber stamp to the president or to anybody else. We must do what the Constitution and what our best judgment requires,” he added.
The question is, however, whose constitution? The United States Constitution, or Tom Daschle’s? Put aside what Daschle and his ilk intend to do to the Bill of Rights with their various gun control measures and campaign finance reform. Remember this story?
In mid-December, Tom Daschle said that Eugene Scalia, President Bush’s nominee to be solicitor general of the Labor Department, didn’t have the votes to be confirmed. “I don’t think he has the 60 votes that would be required for as controversial a nominee as he is,” he said on This Week. Daschle isn’t trying to sink the nomination, you understand; the votes just aren’t there. But Daschle can’t wipe off his fingerprints so easily. His claim is true as far as it goes, but it ignores the fact that 60 votes are “required” only by Daschle’s say-so. Scalia would need 60 votes to break a filibuster, true, but having 40-odd “no” votes is not the same as having enough senators willing to mount a successful filibuster. Besides, a filibuster would proceed only if Daschle wanted it to.
Last week, Daschle was blasting Lott for running a “dictatorship” (i.e., not letting him grandstand on guns as much as he wants). He brought the Senate to a halt in order to air his bogus procedural arguments. (For example: Daschle seems to be under the impression that appropriations bills have to move through the House before the Senate. The constitutional requirement he has in mind concerns tax bills.) Daschle has threatened to shut down the Senate before if he doesn’t get his way.
The next time you hear that Tom Daschle is ‘protecting the constitution’ or acting within his ‘constitutional authority,’ remember, the constitution means whatever he wants it to mean.
I have said it before. Tom Daschle, Mainstream Media’s Mild-Mannered Moron.