Burr + Tillis: yes AND no on Loretta Lynch confirmation
Talk about profiles in courage. *There’s nothing better to make you stand up and salute someone who takes both sides of an important issue.* Thom Tillis is learning his way around Washington very well. For the confirmation vote on Barry Obama’s attorney general, the rookie Republican senator voted FOR and AGAINST her. (Of course, he was merely following the lead of “Tricky Dick” Burr — who has been hanging out on Capitol Hill for more than two decades now.)
Here Tillis is in February explaining his decision to oppose Lynch. That statement was followed by a bunch of drive-by criticism for opposing a North Carolina native and a potentially history-making FIRST black female US attorney general. Never mind her far-left views. Here are the folks at Heritage detailing some of those far-left views:
[…] Lynch’s Views on Voter ID
Lynch, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York (which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties), has made it clear that she would continue Holder’s war on election integrity.
In a speech at the Long Beach Martin Luther King Center in New York in January, Lynch claimed that efforts to improve the integrity of the election process were an attempt “to take back” what Martin Luther King, Jr. had fought for and that state legislatures were trying to “reverse” the gains made in voting. Lynch made it clear she approved of the Justice Department’s lawsuits against states such as North Carolina to stop voter ID laws and changes in early voting and same-day registration rules, saying such suits “will continue.” […]
Lynch and the Death Penalty
Lynch also apparently views the death penalty as racist. She is cited as saying in a 2002 roundtable discussion that she had to repeatedly “explain decisions not to seek the [death] penalty” when she was a prosecutor. She claimed that the relative ease with which the death penalty was applied against blacks and Hispanics suggested a systematic disregard for minority citizens. Lynch would not apply the death penalty even if all of the “problems” with it could be fixed, according to the article, simply because of its supposed disparate impact on minorities: “You can be as fair as possible in a particular case, but the reality is that the federal death penalty is going to hit harder on certain groups.”
Although the death penalty does not come up often in federal prosecutions, if Lynch was attorney general, she would be called upon to apply the death penalty in relevant cases, particularly terrorism prosecutions.[…]
Lynch’s Perspective on Disparate Impact
The death penalty, voter ID and Lynch’s seeming-acquiescence to the recommended “Action Items” in the COPS report also bring into sharp focus an important issue: Lynch’s view towards the dubious legal theory of disparate impact that, as the Wall Street Journal has said, Eric Holder has used to “coerce settlements from banks and other businesses based on statistics but no proof of discrimination.”
In fact, a federal court just threw out the use of disparate impact with respect to the Fair Housing Act in a scathing decision in which the judge called the administration’s attempt to establish disparate impact as a legitimate legal theory as “chutzpah (bordering on desperation)” and “nothing less than an artful misinterpretation” of the law.[…]
Well, the Republican majority in the Senate cut a deal to allow a vote on Lynch in exchange for Democrat agreement to allow a human-trafficking bill to move forward. Burr and Tillis voted YES to end a filibuster of Lynch, but voted NO on final confirmation. Ending the filibuster basically surrendered any leverage you had on Obama to force him to submit a more moderate, reasonable nominee. Since there were TEN 
Republicans ready to vote for Lynch, voting to END the filibuster was basically a vote for her confirmation.
It was laughable to hear all of these Democrats moaning about Republicans opposing a nominee on the basis of ideology, instead of competence and qualifications. The political record is chock full of nominees by Republican presidents getting chewed to bits in the Senate because their views contrasted with the Democrat platform. (Talk to Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas about Senate Democrats’ fairness. Well, Bork is dead so you can’t talk to him. But you get the idea.)
When the Democrats stopped the Republican nominations, they quite often forced the Republicans to submit an alternative that was much less conservative. The Republicans always fold when a doctrinaire liberal gets sent to them for confirmation. We’re feeling the effects of that with the current state of the federal judiciary, and the wacko rulings coming out of federal agencies.
When the voters elect you to stop Obama — you need to at least TRY to do it. We didn’t ask for a partnership with the man in The White House.
Bork and Thomas were from the 80s and 90s but you don’t have to go that far back. Just look at how the Dems treated Bush’s DC Court of Appeals nominee Miguel Estrada. He was opposed purely because of ideology and his nomination was held up for 2 years until he finally just withdrew his name from consideration. (They also filibustered Owen and Pryor judicial nominations at the same time.) The argument by Schumer et al was that the nominee’s views “were too far outside the mainstream” which is Dem-speak for thinking conservatively and following the Constitution. Why can’t the GOP ever act like they’ve won an election?
Burr and Tillis think NC conservatives are stupid and will vote for them anyway. Sadly, they are probably correct. Republican politicians are destroying the country. It’s time for conservatives to wake up to this reality.
This technique of voting for it before you vote against it has been a trademark of Lindsay Graham that Burr started to pick up on in a big way a year or two into his second term. It works because too many voters are stupid and don’t realize how things work in Congress. The answer to that is a one on one primary opponent who can educate them. That would make this house of cards Burr has built collapse.
Party activists are mostly astute enough to understand what Burr is doing, and this has hurt their enthusiasm for Burr. In fact, three GOP district organizations have passed motions to censure Burr for such votes, two unanimously by their district executive committee and one overwhelmingly by the district convention.
Of the two votes, the most important is ALWAYS the procedural vote, as that is where it is easier to stop a bad bill. In the Senate, that is the vote on cloture and in the House it is the vote on the rule that puts the bill on the floor. Some NC Republicans can be counted on to vote consistently on the procedural vote and the final vote. Walter Jones, in particular, does not play the sleazy game of voting one way on one and the other way the next time.
What we need is a primary opponent who can educate voters on this sleaze and slam Tricky Dick on it. The Senate Conservatives Fund is working to find one, and I hope they succeed. I am tired of Tricky Dick playing Republican voters for fools.
Well, if they succeed, Burr’s prospective opponent needs to shout “he confirmed Loretta Lynch” across the land and force Burr to squirm on that procedural vote.