Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Discuss Their Understanding Of The Constitution

The Senate GOP’s decision to filibuster Halligan earned wide rebukes from Senate Republicans*, many of whom slammed this decision to filibuster a judicial nominee as unconstitutional:

• Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.”
• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Every judge nominated by this president or any president deserves an up-or-down vote. It’s the responsibility of the Senate. The Constitution requires it.”
• Tom Coburn (R-OK): “If you look at the Constitution, it says the president is to nominate these people, and the Senate is to advise and consent. That means you got to have a vote if they come out of committee. And that happened for 200 years.”
• John Cornyn (R-TX): “We have a Democratic leader defeated, in part, as I said, because I believe he was identified with this obstructionist practice, this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations.
• Mike Crapo (R-ID): “Until this Congress, not one of the President’s nominees has been successfully filibustered in the Senate of the United States because of the understanding of the fact that the Constitution gives the President the right to a vote.”
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I think filibustering judges will destroy the judiciary over time. I think it’s unconstitutional”
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60, and that’s essentially what we’d be doing if the Democrats were going to filibuster.”
• Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX): “[T]he Constitution envisions a 51-vote majority for judgeships…. [Filibustering judges] amend[s] the Constitution without going through the proper processes…. We have a majority rule that is the tradition of the Senate with judges. It is the constitutional requirement.”
• Jon Kyl (R-AZ): “The President was elected fair and square. He has the right to submit judicial nominees and it is the Senate’s obligation under the Constitution to act on those nominees.”
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent. But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules. They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation.”
• Jeff Sessions (R- AL): “[The Constitution] says the Senate shall advise and consent on treaties by a two-thirds vote, and simply ‘shall advise and consent’ on nominations…. I think there is no doubt the Founders understood that to mean … confirmation of a judicial nomination requires only a simple majority vote.”
• Richard Shelby (R-AL): “Why not allow the President to do his job of selecting judicial nominees and let us do our job in confirming or denying them? Principles of fairness call for it and the Constitution requires it.”
• John Thune (SD): Filibustering judicial nominees “is contrary to our Constitution …. It was the Founders’ intention that the Senate dispose of them with a simple majority vote.”

*All quotes are taken from when George W. Bush was president. But, of course, that doesn’t matter because — in the words of Cornyn — “we need to treat all nominees exactly the same, regardless of whether they’re nominated by a Democrat or a Republican president.”**

**Cornyn’s statement was also made when George W. Bush was president.

Wildfire damage in Texas

This disastrous year is also the year that many Republican lawmakers have also decided to break precedent and demand that much-needed disaster relief be offset with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed to quickly usher $6 billion in emergency disaster relief for states through the Senate. However, even as wildfires obliterate more than 1,000 homes in his state, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) insisted that those funds be offset because “we can’t keep spending money we don’t have.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), whose state has suffered “millions and millions of dollars” in wind and flood damage from Hurricane Irene, simply demanded that “we’ve got to offset everything“:

“We can’t keep spending money we don’t have,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, where deadly wildfires have charred tens of thousands of acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes. [...]

“I think we’ve got to offset everything; anything that’s not allocated has got to be offset these days. It shouldn’t delay it,” Burr told POLITICO. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse that could be accessed like that.”

This purist principle did not stop both Cornyn and Burr for voting to fund rebuilding efforts in Iraq without a single offset. Indeed, Cornyn voted against delaying $20.3 billion in Iraq infrastructure funds even though the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) noted that such a payment would increase the budget deficit. Overall, the U.S. has spent $44.6 billion in taxpayer funds on rebuilding Iraq through emergency supplemental bills — and not a penny was cut from elsewhere in the budget.

Cornyn and Burr’s position — first espoused by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — is so callously out of touch that even fellow Republicans are slamming the idea. After enduring serious bipartisan backlash, Cantor is now gun-shy. Calling Reid’s emergency funds bill “unprecedented,” he is not clearly taking a stand against it.

They [Democrats] have controlled Congress for four years, have occupied the White House for two years, and yet they’ve broken every promise to lead on immigration reform. During his campaign, President Obama promised both LULAC and the National Council of La Raza that immigration reform would be a top priority during his first year in office, but all that changed. [...]

I would say it’s pretty easy to see that there are not many alternatives to his [Reid] party which has cynically misled on a repeated basis the Hispanic community about their good faith in moving forward and their leadership in this important issue. [...]

You have to wonder if President Obama and Senator Reid could muster 60 votes for the health care bill, why couldn’t they show similar leadership and muster support to move an immigration reform bill. One that I believe would be supported on a bipartisan basis.

Watch it:

During his speech, Cornyn additionally accused Democrats of “poison[ing] the well” with the passage of the stimulus and “Obamacare.” Yet, he acknowledged the need for a “credible and compassionate solution” that addresses the situation of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. According to Cornyn — who co-sponsored an immigration reform bill in 2007 — he will continue to work on the issue. “One thing I assure you that hasn’t changed is my own commitment to help fix our broken immigration system,” said Cornyn.

Cornyn presented Latinos with a pretty distorted perspective of what has happened over the past several years with immigration. While it’s true that Obama over-promised and under-delivered on immigration, I’ve repeatedly argued that pinning too much blame on Democrats fails to capture the political limitations the Obama administration has faced and distracts attention from the real culprits of the immigration debate.

From the time he took office, Obama always qualified his “promise” by noting that immigration reform stood in line behind health care reform, energy legislation, and financial regulatory changes. Republicans, meanwhile, have pulled every to stunt to block — or at the very least delay — the entire progressive agenda. Following the passage of health care reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the only Republican who was open to co-sponsoring an immigration bill — simply decided to pull out, similarly stating that the “well has been poisoned.” Republicans continued to rail on immigration reform and trumpeted border security and overturning the 14th amendment to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship. In December, Republicans blocked the DREAM Act. If Republicans couldn’t accept a bill which would help undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, it’s hard to imagine they’d be open to anything more ambitious.

Cornyn should know all of this because he was at the center of the debate last year. For a while, immigration advocates and Democratic leadership seemed to be lobbying Cornyn in hopes that he would join Graham as a second Republican co-sponsor. Ultimately, Cornyn backed away, accused Democrats of playing politics with immigration, and decided his party should single-mindedly focus on securing the border.

Cornyn is no stranger to pandering on immigration. Back in 2006, he received a lot of flack for speaking at a conference entitled “Defending the Homeland: America’s Immigration Crisis.” The event was hosted by the Rockford Institute — an organization described as “xenophobic, racist, and nativist” by its own ex-director. The conference was moderated by the group’s current president, Thomas Fleming, who once wrote, “Whatever we may say in public, most of us do not much like Mexicans, whom we regard as too irrational, too violent, too passionate.”

Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) denounced earmarks and the omnibus bill during a press conference, despite requesting hundreds of millions of dollars of earmarks between them. “I support those projects, but I don’t support this bill,” reasoned Thune. Cornyn defended himself in a “heated exchange” with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl:

Today, the Washington Post reports that two of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress — “unabashed spending barons” Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran of Mississippi — are also planning to vote against the omnibus, despite being responsible for 405 earmarks costing over $865 million.

Sens. McConnell, Wicker, Cochran, Cornyn and Thune are far from the only earmark hypocrites, however. A large number of Republicans requested substantial earmarks for the 2011 omnibus, despite a history of demagoguing the earmark process, and also plan to vote against a bill that included many of their requests. An examination of Taxpayers for Common Sense’s database of earmark requests for this year’s omnibus and their database of who was awarded earmarks last year, along with Sen. Tom Coburn’s working database of the earmarks that actually made it into this year’s omnibus, reveal quite a bit of Republican hypocrisy:

– Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said on Fox News’ “Happening Now” this morning that he would vote against the omnibus bill. He requested 291 earmarks totaling over $770.5 million, and succeeded in getting 86 earmarks into the omnibus.

– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is opposing the omnibus because it’s “full of unnecessary spending which grows the federal government.” He requested 116 earmarks costing $326.8 million, and the omnibus contains one of these for $379,000.

– Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) office said she will vote against the omnibus, which she tried to insert 119 earmarks into, at a cost of $770.9 million. She has $140 million earmarked in the bill.

– Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) will also oppose the omnibus, because it “simply spends too much.” Chambliss requested 122 earmarks totaling $492 million. He achieved $56 million in earmarks in the omnibus.

– Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) blasted the “massive, 2,000 page spending bill” in a statement. Burr tried for 82 earmarks, totaling $287.1 million, and received most of them.

– Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) “has been railing against the spending in that massive bill that could come to a vote before the lame duck session.” He requested 32 earmarks this year, totaling $115.8 million, and got nearly all of them — almost $100 million — into the omnibus.

– Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) tweeted today that “Defending the #earmark establishment is not leadership. Defending business-as-usual in Washington isn’t either. Leaders lead by example.” Rehberg is a proud member of the “earmark establishment” — last year he was the fifth-largest earmarker in the House, with 89 earmarks in the 2010 omnibus totaling $103.5 million.

– Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) said on Fox Business Channel this morning that “It’s a week before Christmas, and unfortunately my Democratic colleagues like to play Santa Claus to the tune of $8 billion in new earmarks.” Lee was in a much more festive mood last year, with 36 earmarks totaling over $33.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

– Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) tweeted today that “A HUGE spending bill is making its way through Congress. $1.1 trillion and 6,000 earmarks. We must stop it. I encourage the President to veto.” Last year, however, Wilson got 15 earmarks costing over $23.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

It is the height of hypocrisy for these Republicans — all of whom have a long history of earmarking, and in most cases requested and received earmarks in this very bill — to suddenly oppose it because of a newly found opposition to “wasteful” spending.

Yesterday, the Senate unveiled an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government. Senate Republicans immediately attacked the bill en masse for containing billions in earmarks, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling the spending provisions “completely and totally inappropriate” and saying he is “actively working to defeat” the bill. “This nearly 2,000-page omnibus filled with thousands of earmarks,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, shows that “President Obama and Democrats have apparently learned nothing from this November’s election.”

Yet, the same may be said about congressional Republicans, who themselves requested over $2 billion in the earmarks attached the omnibus, including millions from McConnell himself:

Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “has a $379,000 earmark to study port dredging in Charleston, something he considers key to economic development.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) championed an earmark that would prevent the state of Texas from converting existing interstate highway lanes into toll roads. And Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) requested over $16 million in defense-related earmarks.

Appearing on Fox News this morning, Cornyn attacked the omnibus bill for containing earmarks, but host Bill Hemmer confronted Cornyn with his own $16 million request. At first, the senator fumbled and tried to change the subject, but after being pressed, Cornyn defended the merits of his earmarks but not the process, before finally trying to exculpate himself by saying he requested the money “earlier on in the year”:

HEMMER: You yourself has asked for earmarks too. … Can you defend that senator?

CORNYN: Well, I believe I can. But I’m not going to. Because I’m going to vote against this bill. … I think we need an earmark moratorium, which I voted for two years, till we fix this broken system, because it’s become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.

HEMMER: I get it, but I’m confused then, then why is there $16 million in requests from you? Is that not true?

CORNYN: Earlier on in the year, I did request earmarks that I think are individually defensible. And if we had a debate on the floor, I think I could show how they help our men and women in uniform fight two different wars.

Watch it:

Of course, Cornyn is right to argue that many earmarks have merit and provide necessary funds for important projects in lawmakers’ districts. For this reason, Democrats and a handful of dissenting Republicans rebuffed efforts to impose a binding earmark ban in the Senate last month. Moreover, as retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) said, “We’re fooling the American people when we tell them the problem [with the deficit] is earmarks.”

But if Cornyn and his colleagues are going to pander to the tea party movement and demonize earmarks, they should at least practice what they preach. But so far, they have not. Just three days after the Senate GOP voted to enact their earmark ban, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Senate Republican, “got himself a whopping $200 million” earmark for his state. Meanwhile, the group of House Republicans most closely aligned with the tea party, those in the Tea Party Caucus, have taken over $1 billion in earmarks over the past year.

Roll Call reports that Cornyn is demanding that Alaskans simply deserve full representation, and is hoping the legal challenges regarding the 2010 Alaska senate election do not deprive the state of its senator when Congress convenes in January:

An Alaska state court judge is expected to make a ruling on the Senate race by Friday, but with an appeal to the state Supreme Court likely, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn said he hopes the court process concludes soon. As we’ve reported, the ongoing battle has put Republicans on Capitol Hill in a tough spot. The Texan addressed that concern Wednesday in an interview with Roll Call. “We just have to be patient and wait for the judge to decide,” said Cornyn, a former judge. “I understand that could be as early as [Thursday], and I hope it doesn’t go on much longer because I think the people of Alaska deserve to have a Senator when we reconvene again in January, and not still have that up in the air.”

When it comes to a Republican senator, Cornyn urgently believes that Alaska (population 698,473) deserves full representation in Congress. However, he was more than happy to deprive 5,266,214 Minnesotans a vote in the senate because of partisan reasons. Cornyn prevented Franken from taking his seat using the threat of a filibuster. Cornyn’s National Republican Campaign Committee also provided lawyers for Coleman to keep Franken out of the Senate for six months.

Not only did Vitter continue to run the ad, but he defended it during a debate last week, asking “Is it a stereotype that folks coming across the border — that is a problem and they look like that? Dennis that is a fact, that is not a stereotype! Let’s get our heads out of the sand!” This morning on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, joined Vitter in defending the ad. Amanpour repeatedly invited Cornyn to denounce the ad’s racial overtones, which he refused to do, saying only it was “appropriate” to raise the issue of illegal immigration:

AMANPOUR: Some people have called that [ad] racist. I want to know, do you think it’s appropriate to finger Hispanics in that way? Do you think it’s appropriate?

CORNYN: I wish we had time to show Melancon’s ads against Vitter. They’re pretty tough.

AMANPOUR: But let me just ask about this particular ad —

CORNYN: I think border security is a federal responsibility and one that the federal government has simply failed to deal with in an appropriate way. And I think it’s appropriate to raise that issue in the campaign.

AMANPOUR: But do you think it’s appropriate in this way? I mean you’re from Texas. You have a big Hispanic group there. Do you think it’s appropriate? Would you have done that?

CORNYN: I didn’t write the ad.

AMANPOUR: Would you have done it?

CORNYN: I think calling attention to illegal immigration is — for example, this last year, Christiane, 45,000 people immigrated to the United States from countries other than Mexico, including counting like Yemen where this bomb emanated from. It’s a national security issue.

Watch it:

Last year, Cornyn hit back against race-based attacks on then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, saying that Newt Gingrich’s allegations that Sotomayor was prejudiced against non-Hispanics were “terrible,” and “not the kind of tone any of us want to set.” By refusing to denounce Vitter’s ad, and even suggesting it’s “appropriate,” Cornyn has apparently revised his opinion of what is an appropriate tone.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

But Republicans also say that they support some parts of the health care law — like the consumer protections that would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. Those elements would help consumers but they’d be better off if Obamacare were repealed and replaced with similar provisions. As Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) explained during his debate in North Carolina last night, “Those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed.”

So would Republicans really adopt strong consumer protections? It’s unlikely. The House Republicans’ ‘Pledge,’ for instance, guarantees coverage regardless of pre-existing condition only to those beneficiaries who had been previously insured. The uninsured can still be denied coverage. Similarly, a bill offered by Sens. Burr and Tom Coburn (R-OK) in May of 2009 encouraged states to “establish rational and reasonable consumer protections,” but did not eliminate the practice of denying coverage nationwide. Throw into this mix yesterday’s comments by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and you quickly get the sense that any GOP pre-existing condition provision would be limited at best:

SIEGEL: But the basic change here, the government has expanded the entitlement to health insurance. Do you hope to see that expansion undone as a matter of federal law?

CORNYN: I think the way it was done is problematic because it imposes a fine on individuals who don’t carry health insurance, but it says, on the other hand, that if you get sick, that an insurance company must issue you a policy regardless of your preexisting conditions and the like, which is driving up the cost of insurance. I think the model, to me, the ideal model is one that we’ve seen used in companies like Whole Foods Company in Austin, Texas, using health savings accounts.

Cornyn, of course, has it backwards. You can’t require insurance companies to “issue you a policy regardless of your preexisting conditions” unless you impose “a fine on individuals who don’t carry health insurance.” If you don’t find a way to encourage people who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered with health insurance to buy coverage, you can’t eliminate the pre-existing condition denials. That’s because without a mandate that brings healthy people into the program, the provision requires insurers to accept individuals who waited too long to purchase coverage. These sicker applicants would use up a lot of health care and drive up costs for everyone else in the pool, pushing out younger and healthier applicants (and their premium dollars). Only sick people who desperately need coverage would remain in the plan and as Kentucky, Main, New Hampshire, New Jersey and many other states have all found out, that’s a prescription for failure.

So the larger point here is that no matter what Republicans tell you about pre-existing conditions, without a mandate, they can’t possibly replace the existing consumer protections. All they can offer is some inferior provision that look a lot like the existing HIPAA law and won’t do much for the uninsured.

CORNYN: The fact of the matter, though, is that President Obama will remain president of the United States and he could veto any legislation we were able to pass. Even if we controlled the House, unless we controlled the Senate and got 60 votes, we wouldn’t be able to pass any corresponding legislation in the Senate. So I think, we need to keep expectations, again, fairly modest as far as what we can do over the next two years. I think it is a chance to work together with the president if he wants to work with us like President Clinton did following the 1994 election to pass things like welfare reform on a bipartisan basis. But, I think, if the president doesn’t reach across the aisle and actually try to do things on a bipartisan basis, the likelihood is that not a whole lot of legislating will be done.”

Watch it (at 7 minutes):

Indeed, as the administration itself has argued, defunding the law will probably be easier than repealing it, but it’s still unclear that Republicans will try to seriously pursue their Tea Party inspired agenda once in power.

Before signing repeal and replace pledges in preparation for the campaign season, the GOP was far more realistic about what it could and should accomplish. By March, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reassured CNN’s John King that “repeal and replace will be the slogan for the fall,” but in January the party didn’t want to campaign on full repeal. On January 13th, young guns Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Politico’s Mike Allen that Republicans “WILL NOT campaign for full health care repeal, but will demand partial repeal, including mandates for health coverage.” And realistically that’s all they’ll be able to accomplish — if they can overcome all of these challenges first.

At a fundraiser for Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck yesterday afternoon, ThinkProgress interviewed several GOP Senators about DeMint’s move to singlehandedly take control of the chamber. DeMint himself told us that his crop of candidates, like Buck, would support his efforts if they are elected to the Senate. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the chairman of the GOP committee tasked with electing more Republican Senators, did not find anything wrong with DeMint’s undemocratic move to seize control of Congress. Asked about DeMint’s unilateral power grab, Cornyn simply smiled and said that he “certainly think[s] it’s a good idea” because it would give more time for lawmakers to review bills:

TP: I have a quick question about Senator DeMint. What do you think about his unilateral hold of all the bills in the Senate before they’re reviewed by a member of his staff.

CORNYN: Well, I think it’s important for every member of the Senate to review legislation before it passes by unanimous consent. There’s a lot of garbage that gets through that should be stopped, certainly ought to be reviewed. I certainly think it’s a good idea to look at it, to read it, know what we’re voting on before it passes.

TP: But what do you think about the leadership structure if just one member can hold up the entire Congress essentially, one member could just have a whim and shut everything down, right?

CORNYN: Well, what creates the pressure is, we’re at the tail end of the session. A lot of people like Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi want to get out of town and a lot of folks want to go and campaign. A lot of this stuff should have been taken care of earlier in the year.

Watch it:

Cornyn appears to be weary about picking fights with DeMint. Earlier this year, DeMint publicly challenged Cornyn’s power as the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and declared that he would be picking his own ultra-conservative candidates to run for office. For instance, Cornyn funneled money to his own candidate in Colorado, Jane Norton, who later lost to DeMint’s candidate, Ken Buck. While Cornyn initially tried to support his own candidates, he was eventually steamrolled by DeMint’s allies in the Club for Growth, a Wall Street front group, FreedomWorks, and other lobbyist-controlled conservative organizations.

As ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser wrote in a post yesterday, DeMint can get away with this stunt because the Senate’s rules are ripe for abuse. By exploiting the rules, DeMint can force up to 60 hours of uninterrupted debate before a final vote. Using this tactic, DeMint can require over two and a half years to deliberate just the 372 bills already passed by the House since August. “In other words,” Millhiser explained, “there is simply not enough time to get more than a fraction of the Senate’s business done if a minority is determined to do everything they can to block progress.” Regardless of national security interests, national emergencies, or really any matter confronted by Congress, DeMint wields ultimate power — while Cornyn and the GOP leadership is too afraid to stand up to him.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

But earlier today — after an initial tepid statement of support from NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer — Cornyn endorsed Delaware U.S. Senate GOP primary winner Christine O’Donnell, despite her strong history of anti-gay rhetoric and positions. “I reached out to Christine this morning, and as I have conveyed to all of our nominees, I offered her my personal congratulations and let her know that she has our support,” Cornyn wrote in an email. “This support includes a check for $42,000 –- the maximum allowable donation that we have provided to all of our nominees.” Later in the day, he appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show to clear up any confusion about his commitment:

CORNYN: Well, really I don’t know the source of the rumors that were attributed to the Republican National Senatorial Committee. I’m the Chairman as you know and certainly without my authorization I corrected the record, talking to Christine this morning. Told her we will support her, in fact we send her some money already…I’ve encouraged my other colleagues to send money from their leadership PAC funds. We’re going to do everything we can to help her get elected in November.

O’Donnell has a long track record of saying and doing things that would suggest that she doesn’t respect the “dignity” of gay people. For instance, as president of Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), “O’Donnell helped facilitate an ex-gay program within the group, even bringing on a staff member to work exclusively on ex-gay issues.” During a 2000 interview on Fox’s now defunct Hannity & Colmes, “O’Donnell decried ‘offensive’ behavior at gay rights parades, complaining that ‘homosexuals’ special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!” “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion,” she said.

As press secretary for Concerned Women of America, O’Donnell complained that policies extending health benefits to gay employees’ partners “legitimizes the homosexual lifestyle” and could “desensitize” Americans to same-sex relationships and lead to legal marriage. O’Donnell also opposed funding programs for AIDS sufferers through the Ryan White Act because she said that federal money has “in the past gone to teach teenagers to use condoms to engage in homosexual behavior that includes anal sex.” Most recently, in her race against Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), O’Donnell insinuated that Castle is gay and then denied it.

And while social conservative organizations have criticized Cornyn for speaking at the Log Cabin event, LGBT friendly groups have remained mum on the Senator’s apparent contradiction. Reached today by phone, Jimmy LaSalvia, a co-founder of GOProud and its Executive Director, told me that “if you look at it, O’Donnell wasn’t elected on social issues. She was elected nominated for the same reason that a lot of other candidates are bring nominated and that’s to call an end to the status quo in Washington.”

The Log Cabin Republicans did not reply to my questions about Cornyn’s participation at next week’s fundraiser, despite repeated inquiries. It would be interesting to know if Cornyn is still invited to attend their event.

I was also troubled by a couple of other areas . . . One has to do with the power of the federal government and I had mentioned a moment ago. Under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court has previously basically given the federal government almost limitless powers and we’ve seen that play here in the debate over the individual mandate in the health insurance bill . . . But Solicitor General Kagan did not seem to recognize that the federal government’s powers are one of enumerated powers delegated by — delegated by the states and by the people.

Just a few minutes earlier, however, Cornyn ranted against judges who have the audacity to substitute their views for those of elected Members of Congress:

­If ­we ­don’t ­like ­the ­way ­Congress ­– ­the ­law ­congress ­makes, ­well, congress,­ of ­course, ­is ­free ­to ­change ­it. And ­if ­we ­the ­people still don’t like the way Congress writes the law when they refuse to respond to the will of the people, we have a right to replace Members of Congress. That’s the way a democracy runs, not by a judge dictating to us what he or she thinks is good for us.

Watch it:

This is not the first time Cornyn set the landspeed record for self-contradiction.  During Kagan’s confirmation hearing, Cornyn insisted that precedents he approves of are sacred, while precedents he disagrees with are a blasphemy that must be overruled.  Moreover, Cornyn’s view that the law and the Constitution mean whatever he wants it to mean is all too common among conservatives.  Most famously, Chief Justice Roberts promised “to have the humility to recognize that [judges] operate within a system of precedent” when he was up for confirmation, only to spend his entire time as Chief Justice ignoring precedents that conservatives don’t like.

In other words, Cornyn and Roberts are taking a page out of Henry Ford’s playbook.  The American people can have whatever kind of laws they want — so long as they’re conservative.

HOST: Last question. We learned this week that President Bush’s memoir is going to be available really in mid October … Is this a plus for your candidates to have President Bush’s administration regurgitated, discussed before election day? …

CORNYN: Look, I think President Bush’s stock is going up a lot since he left office…I think a lot of people are looking back with a little more — with more fondness on President Bush’s administration, and I think history will treat him well.

HOST: So the book will be a plus for your candidates?

CORNYN: You know, I haven’t read it, so I don’t know what’s gonna be in it. But it’s intriguing when you say it’s going to be candid.

Watch it:

Clearly, though, the American public is still sour on Bush’s record. A recent Time poll found that 61 percent blame Bush for the “balky economy,” versus 27 percent who blame President Obama. By a whopping 53-to-33 percent margin, Americans favor Obama over Bush.

As for Cornyn’s claim that “history will treat” Bush “well,” the Siena Research Institute this month released its latest poll of presidential scholars, who ranked Bush as the worst president of the modern era and in the bottom five overall. Despite evidence like this, Cornyn is only the latest prominent conservative to engage in wishful thinking about Bush’s legacy, following the likes of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Bush’s former Attorney General John Aschcroft, and Karl Rove. (HT: Taegan Goddard)

- William Tomasko

Gregory correctly dismissed what he was hearing from Sessions as “gauzy,” and turned to Cornyn, saying, “I’m not hearing an answer here, what are the painful choices” that Republicans are prepared to make to cut the deficit? Instead of offering any ideas of own, and in direct contrast to the sense of urgency with which conservatives paint the deficit, Cornyn responded that he would wait for President Obama’s debt commission’s report, which will conveniently come after the election. Gregory replied, “wait a minute, conservatives need a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they need to cut?”:

GREGORY: I think what a lot of people want to know is, if Republicans do get back in power, what are they going to do?

SESSIONS: It’s quite simple that Americans do know the agenda that is before us. They understand what the President and the speaker stand for, and they understand what Republicans stand for. Republicans…very strong, standing with the American people back home. [...]

GREGORY: Congressman, congressman, that’s a pretty gauzy agenda so far. I mean, what specifics — what painful painful choices are Republicans prepared to make? … How do you [balance the budget]? Tell me how you do it. Name a painful choice that Republicans are prepared to say we have to make.

SESSIONS: Well first of all, we have to make sure as we look at all we spend in Washington, D.C., with not only the entitlement spending, but also the bigger government we cannot afford anymore. We have to empower the free enterprise system.

GREGORY: Congressman, these are not specifics, voters get tired of that.

SESSIONS: Oh they are. They are. … Let’s go right to it.

GREGORY: Do it!

GREGORY: Senator, I’m sorry, I’m not hearing an answer here on specifics. What painful choices to really deal with the deficit — is Social Security on the table? — what will Republicans do that will give them, like ’94, there was the Contract with America, what are voters going to say, hey, this is what Republicans will say yes to.

CORNYN: Well, the president has a debt commission that reports December the first, and I think we’d all like to see what they come back with.

GREGORY: But wait a minute, conservatives need a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they need to cut?

Watch it:

Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, called Cronyn and Sessions’ performance “disappointing” on Twitter, writing, “a consensus GOP agenda” is “badly needed…so these guys have something to say.”

In a candid moment on Bill Bennett’s radio show this week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seemed to admit why Republicans refuse to give specifics. Republicans shouldn’t “lay out a complete agenda,” King said, because people might not like it.

Transcript:

GREGORY: And, Congressman Sessions, I want to go back to you. This has been a debate so far this morning about, you know, the relative merits of Republican rule during the Bush years and what this president has or has not accomplished so far. I think what a lot of people want to know is if Republicans do get back into power, what are they going to do?

REP. SESSIONS: It’s quite simple that the American people do understand the agendas that are before us. They understand what the president and the speaker stand for, and they understand what Republicans stand for. Republicans, and especially our candidates who are all over this country, very strong standing with the American people back home, we need to live within our own means. And certainly the projections that are ahead including health care and the projections for unemployment for a long time and debt for as far as we can see is staggering. We need to live within our own means. Secondly, we need to make sure that we read the bills. These bills are so bad, which is why we don’t have a budget that is being looked at now. The 2011 budget is staggering in terms of taxes, and the, the discipline that is lacking from this House Democratic leadership to even debate and bring the bill for the budget and appropriations to the floor is a lack of leadership. And lastly…

MR. GREGORY: But, Congressman, that’s a, that’s a pretty gauzy agenda so far. I mean, what specific–what painful choices are Republicans prepared to make? Are they going to campaign on repealing health care, for instance, repealing financial regulation? Would you like to see those two things done?

REP. SESSIONS: Well, first of all, let’s go right to it. We’re going to balance the budget. We should live within our own means, and we should read the bills and work with the American people.

MR. GREGORY: How do you do it? Tell me how you do it. Name a painful choice that Republicans are prepared to say we ought to make.

REP. SESSIONS: Well, first of all, we need to make sure that as we look at all that we are spending in Washington, D.C., with, not only the, the entitlement spending but also the bigger government, we cannot afford anymore. We have to empower the free enterprise system. See, this is where…

MR. GREGORY: Congressman, these are not specifics.

REP. SESSIONS: Oh, they…

MR. GREGORY: And voters get, get tired of that.

REP. SESSIONS: That, that…

MR. GREGORY: You want to deal with entitlement spending…

REP. SESSIONS: They are…

MR. GREGORY: …will you raise the retirement age on Social Security, will you cut benefits in Social Security?

REP. SESSIONS: Let, let–let’s go…

MR. GREGORY: Will you repeal health care?

REP. SESSIONS: Let’s go right to it.

MR. GREGORY: Do it.

REP. SESSIONS: And Chris talked right about it. He wants to diminish employers’ abilities to be able to be competitive across this world. We need to make sure that we allow employers, which was in that 52-page report that was presented to the president of the United States by CEOs in this country, we need to go back to the exact same agenda that is empowering the free enterprise system rather than diminish it.

MR. GREGORY: Senator, I’m sorry, I’m not hearing an answer here on specific–what painful choices to really deal with the deficit. Is Social Security on the table? What will Republicans do that, that, that would give them–like ’94, there was a Contract With America. What are voters going to say, “Hey, this is what Republicans will say yes to”?

SEN. CORNYN: Well, the president has a debt commission that reports December the 1st, and I think we’d all like to see what they come back with. We’ve got three of our most outstanding members on that commission–Mike Crapo, Tom Coburn and Judd Gregg–and I–my hope is they’ll come back with a bipartisan solution to the debt and particularly entitlement reform, as you, as you mentioned. But I…

MR. GREGORY: But wait a minute, conservatives need a, a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they want to cut?

SEN. CORNYN: I said we need to do this on a bipartisan basis. We’ve, we’ve had a, we’ve had a…
MR. GREGORY: But what is the Republican Party stand for with regard…

SEN. CORNYN: …we’ve had a partisan juggernaut.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEN. CORNYN: Well, I mean, in, in part, what I alluded to earlier is what people are tired of is the runaway spending and the debt, and I think that is a positive agenda–smaller government, living with their means.

It’s $2.2 billion, it puts money in just about every program — needed or not. And then it takes that money out of the stimulus — the Recovery Act — takes it away from jobs. [...] For all of the voices on both sides of the aisle which have talked about jobs and all of the voices that have talked about fiscal moderation, to throw caution to the winds, to put $2.2 billion into programs whether they are needed or not — makes no sense at all.

We must stop illegal immigration as it comes across the border. This will not do it. You know it. And I know it. This is what’s called a symbolic amendment to show where you stand in many ways. And it’s $2.2 billion dollars. We can find amendments that will do the job, that cost a lot less, and will not take away jobs that we want to create and preserve in the entire country.

Watch it:

Wonk Room reported earlier this week that spending on immigration enforcement, particular border enforcement, has steadily climbed since 2002 and continues to rise under the Obama administration from about $9 billion in 2008 to over $11 billion in 2010. Overall, the U.S. will spend over $17 billion in FY 2010 just on enforcing immigration laws. However, enforcement without broader reform that doesn’t address the nation’s outdated visa system and does nothing about the 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. doesn’t really fix the problem.

Republicans, meanwhile, continue pounding on border security — despite the fact that the border is safer than it has been in years and irrespective of the controversial actions President Obama took this week when he deployed 1,200 National Guard troops to the border and requested $500 million in supplementary funds for border security. Earlier today, the Senate also defeated an amendment proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that would have sent 6,000 National Guardsmen to the southern border and a separate amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) that would’ve thrown more money at Operation Streamline, a “zero tolerance” border enforcement program that has been found to “divert scarce resources from core law enforcement priorities and community safety, and strain U.S. courts.”

HEMMER: There are unspent stimulus dollars that are still in the pipeline. You would like to take a whopping $2.2 billion of unspent stimulus money and put it towards border patrol and border security. What’s your proposal there?

CORNYN: Well the fact of the matter is we need a credible immigration program starting with credible border security. Last year we had over a half a million people detained coming over our border illegally. No one with a straight face can claim with a straight face that we’ve gotten the job done. I think is as a pre-requisite to doing other things we need to do in immigration reform, we need to start with border security which means more boots on the ground. We need the technology, the airplanes, the drones, the helicopters.

Watch it:

However, Cornyn doesn’t mention that violence and crime on the US-Mexico border has been “on the decline” in recent years. As Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said, the border is as “secure now as it has ever been.” ABC News reports that “cities like Tucson; Chula Vista, California; and Lardeo, Texas, have all seen year-over-year drops in violent crime, murder, and rape. El Paso, Texas, continues to have one of the lowest rates of violent crime of all U.S.cities.”

Despite the drop in crime, spending on immigration enforcement, particular border enforcement, has steadily climbed since 2002 and continues to rise under the Obama’s administration from about $9 billion in 2008 to over $11 billion in 2010. Overall, the U.S. will spend over $17 billion in FY 2010 just on enforcing immigration laws:

Comprehensive immigration reform, which would include border security provisions, but also do something about the 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S., would meanwhile generate at least $1.5 trillion in cumulative GDP over ten years. By creating a more flexible visa system, immigration reform would also likely allow border patrol to more effectively focus their resources on dangerous threats to public safety and national security instead of pursuing those who simply come to the U.S. to work. While quick to call for costly ramped up enforcement measures, the Republican Party has so far refused to pursue immigration reform in 2010.

WALLACE: Do you see some similarities to what politicians and the press did to you in the fall of 2008?

PALIN: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, one thing that we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don’t assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about constitutional impacts with a reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be — and then the opportunity that they seize to get you.

You know, they’re looking for that gotcha moment. And that’s what it evidently appears to be that they did with Rand Paul, but I’m thankful that he was able to clarify his answer about his support for the Civil Rights Act.

Maddow, despite Palin’s rhetoric, provided Paul a fair forum, giving him approximately 15 minutes to explain his views. Last week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) also said that Maddow did a “gotcha” interview, claiming, “If I’m walking down the street minding my own business and somebody sticks a microphone under my nose about a law that was passed 40 years ago, without more detail — I think it probably caught him a little bit by surprise.” Of course, Maddow didn’t “stick” a microphone under Paul’s nose; he freely appeared on her show and the issue of the Civil Rights Act was brought up earlier, during an interview Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky. At that time, Paul had a very clear opinion on the issue.

Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, however, Cornyn admitted that asking Paul about his positions is fair game:

GREGORY: Don’t you think this is fair game? Questions about his views about the limit and scope of government?

CORNYN: Well, I do think that’s a fair topic, and I’m sure you’ll be hearing extensively from him and all the other candidates over the next six months.

Watch Palin and Cornyn:

There is no doubt that Ms. Kagan possesses a first-rate intellect, but she is a surprising choice from a president who has emphasized the importance of understanding ‘how the world works and how ordinary people live.’ Ms. Kagan has spent her entire professional career in Harvard Square, Hyde Park, and the DC Beltway. These are not places where one learns ‘how ordinary people live.’ Ms. Kagan is likewise a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice.

Like his colleagues Sens. Mitch McConnell (KY) and Jim DeMint (SC), Cornyn’s experience attack is hypocritical, considering his past support for President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers (who had no prior judicial experience) to the Supreme Court in 2005. Salon’s Mike Madden notes Cornyn’s comments on Oct. 27, 2005 after Miers withdrew her nomination:

I mean, one reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers’s qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court. Because right now you have people who’ve been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives, or academicians. And what you see is a lack of grounding in reality and common sense that I think would be very beneficial.

Challenged about his hypocrisy in an interview on MSNBC, Cornyn defended himself by saying Miers had more “practical legal experience than Kagan.” “She, like Ms. Kagan, has not been a judge, and I don’t think that should be a disqualifier,” said Cornyn, ignoring his assertion that “most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice.”

Roll Call reports another inconsistency in Cornyn’s rhetoric on Kagan today. Earlier this month, Cornyn was asked about the possibility of Obama nominating a woman to replace Justice John Paul Stevens and he replied that there are “a number of highly qualified [women], including Elena Kagan and Diane Wood.” A Cornyn spokesman claimed that “there was no contradiction in the Senator’s words since his earlier comments were about there being a wealth of female lawyers in the country.”