WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore entered the debate over judicial filibusters Wednesday, accusing Republican senators of being in thrall to religious zealots and damaging American democracy "in order to satisfy their lust for one-party domination of all three branches of government."
"Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image," Gore told an audience of 700 Democratic activists from MoveOn.org's political action committee.
Gore's speech was the headline event in a series of rallies organized by MoveOn, a liberal organization that uses the Internet to encourage political activism.
The group said it held 190 rallies Wednesday, in all 50 states, opposing Republican plans to seek a Senate rules change to forbid the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations.
Gore, who in 2000 lost the presidency to George W. Bush in an election that ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, accused Republicans of unwisely mixing religion with politics.
"Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forbears and ours first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the Old World who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls," Gore said.
To lengthy applause, he added: "This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place."
During Bush's first term, the Senate confirmed 205 judicial nominees, but the Democrats threatened to filibuster 10 appellate court nominees whom they considered extremists. Sixty votes are needed to halt a filibuster, a figure that, even with GOP gains in the 2004 election, is short of the Republican majority in the Senate.
Seven of those blocked nominations were resubmitted this year, and a showdown over the filibuster is expected soon as they are voted out of committee for confirmation by the full Senate.
Gore's remarks came three days after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) took part, via videotape, in a nationwide simulcast sponsored by conservative Christian activists calling for an end to Democratic filibusters "against people of faith."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group whose political action arm sponsored Sunday's simulcast, responded angrily to Gore's remarks.
