Notwithstanding the ingenious suggestions of various Volokh Conspiracy commenters, there are only two ways that the Senate can avoid seating Roland Burris. One is to persuade the Supreme Court to overrule Powell v. McCormack. That could happen, but liberals won’t be happy if it does. The rationale for the decision would almost certainly be the Political Question doctrine, the revival of which would be a severe setback for the Legal Left. I look forward hopefully to Justice Scalia’s majority opinion and to the NLG/ABA/AAJ gnashing of teeth thereafter.
The alternative is to persuade the appointee to back out, by making it clear to him that he will spend an unhappy two years as a gate crasher. The Democratic leadership has to let him take the oath of office, but they can’t be compelled to admit him to the party caucus or give him committee assignments and decent office space. Members can ignore his bills and refuse to let him co-sponsor their own. The presiding officer can overlook him when he tries to speak on the floor. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee can announce that he will get no support in 2010. Faced with the choice between a prosperous lobbying practice in Springfield and pariah status in Washington, Mr. Burris can be expected to ease himself out of the picture. Bobby Rush might call the bluff and dare Harry Reid et al. to consign the lone black Senator to the back of the bus. Roland Burris won’t.
Jennifer Rubin has a series of astute observations [links omitted]:
Harry Reid better have a more compelling argument than “fraud” to keep Roland Burris out of the senate. For starters, where’s the evidence of “fraud” and is Reid accusing Burris of some misdeed? By their brilliant strategy of opposing a special election, the Democrats have now ensured an unseemly and protracted legal and political free-for-all.
President-elect Obama is predictably “disappointed.” That, you may recall, is the officially-approved default reaction.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan whines that Blago’s pick of Burris leaves the state in a “terrible situation.” Hmmm. How could this have been prevented? Someone ask Sen. Dick Durbin.
I agree that Reid’s got a tough case: it’s not enough to say Blago is a crook and was considering a list of other people for a price. Blago’s move, in a way, is a brilliant bit of misdirection, but it does undermine any insanity defense. This is one clever pol.
My favorite quip, though, is Jonah Goldberg’s: “Roland Burris is more qualified to be undemocratically appointed to the Senate than Caroline Kennedy is.” He heads that “Stating the Obvious”, and it is.
I’ll admit to feeling pangs of sympathy for the Senator-designate. Although his persona practically defines “lackluster”, his biography is inspirational (even if he does say so himself). He grew up as a young black man in downstate Illinois at a time when racial attitudes there were only marginally more enlightened than in Alabama and was elected to statewide office on an essentially nonracial basis. It’s a pity that his career will be remembered not for those achievements but for this twilight fiasco.
Further reading: John Kass, “For Sheer Brazenness, Nobody Surpasses Rod”
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God bless...
Dick
Posted by: The Cyber Hymnal | Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 04:39 PM