It should come as no surprise that some members of the Democrat Party are pandering to their party’s far-left constituency by threatening a filibuster on the Alito nomination.

And good citizen that I am, it should come as no surprise to the Democrats that I’m more than willing to educate them on the proper role and powers (or lack thereof) of the minority party.

Lets start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). The President of the United States has the authority to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court. The current President is George Bush, a Republican.

A limitation on the President’s authority is that the Senate has the authority to “advise” and “consent” to the President’s choices. If a reminder is needed, the party currently in power in the Senate is the Republican party. Coincidentally, and unrelated to the choice of Supreme Court Justices, Republicans also control the House of Representatives.

The reason that Republicans control these seats of power is because people realized that Democrats were forever indebted to their far-left constituency (try to find that phrase in a news item, by the way), and decided to give control to the seats of power to Republicans.

Democrats have lost the last two Presidential elections and they haven’t controlled the House or the Senate since 1994. The American electorate has tried to tell Democrats for over a decade now that they are not happy with the way Democrats govern the country, with the decisions Democrats make, or with their constant leftward tilt. For all I know, Americans may think Dems suffer from chronic halitosis, too.

Lesson to Republicans

Democrats have the right, even the responsibility, to bring their side of the debate to the Alito nomination.

Lesson to Democrats

This debate should be presented bearing in mind that your party does not control the White House, the House of Represenatives, or the Senate. Your part of the debate does not allow you to act as if you control the Senate and bring down the nomination just because you don’t like his record. You should remember that yours is the losing party, and has been for the last 10+ years.

To assist with this lesson, I have created a large “L” and placed it at the top of this post. Simply right-click on it and select “Print Picture”. Take the printout, cut out the “L”, and glue it to your foreheads. You’ll be reminded every time you look in the mirror.

UPDATE: The Washington Times reports that some Dems actually understand that they need to win elections:

Sen. Barack Obama, the freshman Democrat from Illinois who is one of his party’s brightest stars, chided his party yesterday for its “over-reliance” on “procedural maneuvers” such as the fruitless filibuster threats against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“We need to recognize — because Judge Alito will be confirmed — that if we’re going to oppose a nominee, that we’ve got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake,” he said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I think that the Democrats have to do a much better job in making their case on these issues,” he said. “These last-minute efforts, using procedural maneuvers inside the Beltway, I think, has been the wrong way of going about it.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, seemed to agree.

“I think a filibuster makes sense when you have a prospect of actually succeeding,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Mr. Obama had a simple prescription for his fellow Democrats.

“There’s one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values. And that’s to win elections,” he said.

Others blogging about the proposed filibuster:

• Big Lizards has Hillary crawling back
• Lib site Media Girl celebrates Filibustermania with Young Turks
• Hub Politics notes that Buyer’s Remorse is early this season
• The Voice of Treason is on the campaign trail with Kerry

TD