Hear, hear. I'm closing my wallet.

In the past 24 hours, 2 heavyweights in the GOP have proven they're either indecisive incompetents or outright traitors to their own. Senator Frist has managed to come across as a dopey dawdler in taking what was a huge momentum from the 2004 elections and allowing it to fizzle in not addressing what was touted as a huge concern of the electorate: breaking up the filibuster logjam in the Senate. John McCain has decided to flip the bird to his own constituents and the rest of the GOP in siding squarely with the Democrats on this issue, clearing up the issue of whose side he's on. Combine that with the fraud and travesty of the "Campaign Finance Reform" he managed to get through Congress to shut off the free speech of the American people, and I think you can write the good Mr. McCain off as a candidate in 2008. News reports also state that there are 6 other GOP Senators who can't seem to muster the will to get in there and grapple with the issue.

The Republican Senators calling for the filibuster to be ruled out of order on this issue have the Constitutional high ground. There is nothing in the Constitution that says judicial nominees require a supermajority to be confirmed and the Constitution is quite clear about the need for such a supermajority on many other issues. If the Founding Fathers had meant for judicial nominees to require such, they would have included it in on the list. They didn't, so it's not. The matter of the Constitutionality of ruling a filibuster out of order is a non-issue and a distraction put forth by those hoping people will be simply too lazy to check.

The number of nominees held up or confirmed by the Senate is also chaff tossed up in the air. Much has been made, sneeringly, by those on the Left that there's only a handful of nominees that have been blocked by these filibusters. The Senate has a duty to confirm or deny a nominee put forth by the President for a judicial position. This is precisely the duty that the Democrats' filibuster is sloughing off. The fact that there's only 5% of the nominees (or whatever number it is) that are being denied an up-or-down vote is immaterial. I would submit that these people who are suggesting that the number aproved versus blocked makes it OK to deny these nominees a vote would not be so sanguine were it 5% of, say, their paychecks that didn't get processed. Or if 5% of their prescription medicines were perpetually backordered. Or 5% of their vehicle repairs that weren't done properly.

It is not OK for a minority in the Senate to dictate for the majority. That's not a democracy. That's the antithesis of a democracy, and to hear people defend it who then wail about our democracy crumbling is, frankly, disgusting. That disgust is only superceded, for me, by the sheer dereliction of the GOP Senators who have allowed this to continue. Captain Ed Morrisey over at Captain's Quarters has it right. Right on the money, as a matter of fact:

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To hell with Frist, to hell with Thune, and to hell with the GOP if they wait until the session is half-over before finding their spine or other significant parts of their anatomy. The GOP campaigned on judicial nominations as the second-highest priority for the Senate, and the electorate rewarded them with a healthy gain of four seats, remarkable for an election in which the incumbent president won by a tight margin. After spending a record amount of money on supporting Republican candidates, the electorate has sat back and watched as the Democrats, led by Harry Reid, have uncorked one lunatic manuever after another: challenging Ohio's slate of electors, holding up Condoleezza Rice's nomination while people like Mark Dayton outright call her a liar, and attempting to extort the White House into giving up its Constitutional assignment of nominating the judges the President sees fit for Senate approval. What has this bunch of Republican milquetoasts done? Nothing. Why? Apparently, they've changed their priorities since the election. No longer are judicial nominations the leading priority. In fact, they've done everything they can to backpedal from the frightening spectre of Harry Reid, for Pete's sake. Now they claim that they want to pass as much legislation as they can before the vote on nominations comes up ... meaning that the judges are actually the lowest priority for Frist and his band of merry cowards.

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His post is titled, "Not. One. Dime." and I think you can get the gist pretty well. I've received fundraiser letters from the Republican Party in the past few months. Well, I'm done with sending money in to an organization whose leadership called on its members to help in the last election and then won't even try to live up to their promises. I'm done supporting Congressmen and Senators who either can't or won't summon the courage to do what they said was necessary back when they wanted the votes. If they won't step in and handle their own house, then I'm not trusting them with anything else. If they can't take care of the problem they have already acknowledged, then maybe it's time to start putting my money behind people who will. Hear, hear, Captain Ed. Not one dime from me, either.