Republicans Flex Their New-Found Muscles

This past Tuesday, the Republican Party regained its strength as an effective minority party, and blocked a leftist doctrinaire ideologue from becoming the newest member of the National Labor Relations Board. I covered the reasons behind the importance of blocking this nomination on February 5: Scott Brown In Another Race.

The importance of the election of Scott Brown to the Senate cannot be over-emphasized. A totally dispirited GOP was facing a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate until Brown came along. The election of Brown was both significant and portentous in many ways. Not the least of those is the fact that Brown wanted very much to be involved in the issue of putting the leftist Craig Becker (that's Becker in the middle of the photo) on the NLRB, and pushed his own confirmation hard in order to be able to participate in the debate and vote on the nomination. He kept his word, and the nomination went down to defeat.

Brown has so far turned out to be everything he promised and more. He knew what his intentions toward Becker were, but he listened and participated, then voted against the nomination. On the other hand, a judicial appointment was on the docket. No Obama nomination will ever be conservative, but Brown fully understands that as well as the fact that judicial nominations cannot remain forever in limbo, and that not all judges will be to the Senator's liking. He has indicated he will vote in favor of the nominee, even though Joseph Greenway is to the left of the current U.S. Supreme Court on some major issues. Brown has, in one day, proven that he is a man of his word, and at the same time dispelled any notion that he will be a Republican obstructionist. No mean feat for a senator who has been in Congress less than a week.

Brown's influence, along with the Democrats' loss of their sixty vote supermajority brought other results on the Becker nomination. This time the Senate voted 52 to 33, with Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson voting with the Republicans. Blue dog Democrats are no longer faced with the choice of voting strictly along party lines while risking losing their constituencies or suffering the wrath of their party for fouling up a filibuster cloture vote. This gives them the out of voting against far-left proposals in order to satisfy the party leaders and the president on the grounds that it would cost them the election back home. This was the first big test of the strength of the new Republican moderate-conservative coalition in Congress.

Republicans have been stalling the Becker nomination for months, largely through "holds" and other parliamentary maneuvers. But as Brown and the other Republicans knew, there could be no more stalling. It was coming to a vote come hell or high water, and Brown was now seated and ready to vote against Becker. It worked. Nebraska has a right to work law, so it's somewhat possible that Sen. Nelson might not have voted for cloture. The seating of Brown gave him blessed relief, so that he could keep what remaining voters he still has in Nebraska and designate the Becker vote as "a lost cause anyway" that he would not risk political suicide over.

This is but one vote in one battle in the ongoing war against Obama statist government. But it was a test of the Republican's new political power, and we can be both proud and grateful that it passed the test with flying colors. We must remember that the Democrats are still the majority part (by a substantial margin until the November elections). Some battles will not be worth the fight, or the accompanying cry of "obstructionism." As a general rule, presidents should be allowed the right to have their nominees confirmed by the Senate unless the nominee is an extremist with his own partisan agenda. Becker fit that definition to the nonce, and the Republicans were right in defeating the nomination.

When another nominee for the NLRB is submitted, it will likely be a somewhat pro-labor candidate. That is the way of politics, and if there is sufficient evidence and testimony that the nominee is neither doctrinaire nor radical, the Republicans should allow the nomination to be confirmed. The NLRB members are supposed to be entirely neutral in making management/labor decisions, but expecting that is simply unrealistic. Just being fair is probably the best one can ask, and in a situation where the arguments are nearly equally valid, it is natural that a Democrat is going to come down on the side of labor. Scott Brown understands this, and I hope and pray that Republicans, and particularly conservatives, don't decide he is a Benedict Arnold if he votes to confirm a Democratic nominee at some time in the future.