10.17.07
House GOP plays dirty tricks; liberals blame Democrats
Luckily I haven’t seen any of the people who actually run some of the liberal blogs take this view point, but that is largely the opinions of those posting in the comment sections of said blogs after the GOP deputy whip introduced an amendment in such away that would have forced the FISA bill in the house back to committee, causing the house leadership to pull the bill to weigh their options.
One type of comment was “why didn’t they send the bill to the floor without allowing amendments” (otherwise known as a closed rule – which was traditionally used to stop congressmen from going wild when they had to vote on tax bills). Of course, the GOP used closed rules all the time because they allowed no amendments and limited debate to only about an hour on each side. Of course, democrats, and particularly liberal democrats, railed against the closed rule when the GOP controlled congress for the very reason that it shut down debate and cut off amendments.
I’m trying to figure out which is worse – the House leadership standing by their belief to not use a closed rule, but then getting bitten by that decision, or liberals who bitch about the closed rule when the GOP used it, then bitch about the dem leadership not using it. Oh wait, that isn’t a hard choice.
A comment type on a similar vein was “our leadership is so incompetent that they got caught off guard by this.” Perhaps, but those are the risks one takes when operating under an open rule.
The final type of comment type seems to be along the lines of “why don’t they just defeat the amendment?” Well, yes, but from what I heard, the way this amendment was introduced forces the bill to go back to committee. I’ve never heard of this happening before, and it’s a rather slick parliamentary move.
The leadership doesn’t want to put it’s members, particularly the blue dogs, in a position of voting on an amendment which says that the bill can’t be used to prevent intelligence gathering on Osama bin Laden and other terrorist threats. While that amendment sounds great, it basically creates a giant loophole in the law that the space shuttle could fly through. But how are you going to expect the blue dogs and other possibly vulnerable members to go back and and say that they voted against “gathering intelligence on Osama bin laden?”
Most liberals would probably tell them to just suck it up. Of course, most liberals wouldn’t shed any tears if all the blue dogs lost anyway, which is why they aren’t too concerned about whether they do something that would hurt their chances of getting re-elected. And weren’t the liberals wanting this bill to be defeated in the first place? Why are they so upset over a vote over a bill they didn’t want to get passed in the first place being delayed.
Oh yeah, because it gives them an excuse to take a cheap shot at the democratic leadership.
Addendum: I’m trying to figure out what difference there is between a closed rule and suspension of the rules, other than the fact that suspension of the rules requires a 2/3 vote in the House. I thought the tradeoff for the 2/3 votes was the fact that you had limited debate and no amendments, but it appears like the closed rule allows the House the same effect, except they only need to get a majority to pass the bill. Why even have the rule to suspend the rules then?
Oh, and do liberals realize that more progressive members of the caucus wouldn’t be able to introduce amendments to “fix” the FISA bill under a closed rule. The leadership probably would have been accused of obstructing “fixes” to the bill had they brought it to consideration with a close rule. In other words, they lose either way.
I gotta love it when liberals put their own party into a lose-lose situation. (Of course, they would say the leadership did it by not introducing a bill they liked anyway. Of course, then it wouldn’t have passed, and they’d been blamed then too. So it’s a lose-lose-lose situation for the leadership).
Mukasey: Acceptable or Not?
Most on the left-leaning blogs appear to be signaling that they don’t want Congress to confirm Mukasey. Of course, I was expecting this since they probably wouldn’t approve of anyone short of Patrick Fitzgerald (ie, someone Bush would never nominate to begin with).
Of course Mukasey can be better on a variety of issues, but that was to be expected of someone nominated by any Republican president, much less Bush. The question is: is this the best we can get? Leaving the current acting attorney general in place is not acceptable as he is a rubber-stamper for Bush. However, if we reject Mukasey, is that going to pressure Bush to nominate someone better, or just make him go “well f you then” and nominate someone horrible, and now we have a choice between leaving in someone we don’t want or confirming someone we don’t want, instead of actually having a chance to confirm someone who doesn’t seem all that bad.
Talking Point Memo has several videos of Mukasey being at least willing to stand up for the rule of law against the Bush Administration, including being anti-torture, as well as admitting that there are serious issues with Guantanamo that must be fixed, that hiring Justice Department officials, especially United States Attorneys, must not be done by those who hold partisan positions within the department, and that Congress can, in fact, limit the President’s ability to wiretap.
(In this instance, he said that FISA didn’t go “up to the President’s authority” and thus the President had free reign in that gap. Feingold corrected him by saying that FISA left no gap. If Murkasey reviews FISA and agrees that there is no gap, then, if he’s telling the truth in this hearing, it should preclude Bush from exercising warrantless wiretapping).
As I said, the response from the left hasn’t been unsurprising: basically ranging from “he wont promise to put Bush into a headlock until he submits to a beating by Congress” to “he’s just telling the Democrats what they want to hear.”
Of course, this begs the question of, if giving the answers “democrats want to hear” isn’t good enough, then what exactly is good enough? The answer to the question is that: nothing will ever be good enough and the left will oppose the nomination, no matter who it is or what they say. Mukasey hasn’t said anything which I have found outrageous, while making several statements which appear to backtrack on much of what Bush has done. But this search for perfection is one reason why the left doesn’t get the respect that they say that they should get.
Addendum: I should add, and I think I pretty much already said this, but I thought I’d say it again: confirmation hearings like this isn’t a matter of beating down countless nominations until you get one that you like.
The Senate has no power over who the acting AG is nor who Bush nominates. That is not to say that the Senate should rubber stamp anyone that gets nominated, but there has to be a realistic expectation of the range of people who will ever get nominated. This is why even a democratic congress confirm conservative appointees by conservative presidents unless they’re just terrible, because there is no expectation that a conservative president will nominate anyone other than a conservative appointee.
Just refusing to confirm an Attorney General nominee for the sake of not confirming him because Bush nominated him doesn’t solve any of the problems that the Congress has. Refusing to confirm someone isn’t going to cause Bush concern or make it any more likely that Congress is going to get the documents they are looking for. Meanwhile, confirming someone is, at worst, going to make things stay the same.
While obviously staying the same is something that no democrat wants, if someone comes up who clearly appears like they are going to be a good improvement over what we had, and it’s highly unlikely that we’re going to get a nominee any better, then I don’t see why there is a reason to not confirm him.
24%
24%:
Bush’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent.
Ouch, of course liberals will grab onto this to show that Congress should send an army to invade the White House, or something:
A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month’s record low.
Of course, this is due to three things: Republicans unhappy that the Congress is controlled by Democrats and doing many Democratic things, Independents mad at Republicans for holding up the Democratic things that the Democrats are trying to do, and Democrats mad at the Democrats for not doing things that only the liberal part of the Democratic base wants them to do (like defund the war).
Zogby writes that there is a “throw the bums out” mood in the nation, which would make republicans happy if it were actually true.
Except that when people are asked who they’ll vote for in Congressional elections in 2008, Democrats still lead Republicans by double digits in most polls. Hardly a “throw the bums out” atmosphere, and why I think the low Congressional approval rating has as much or more to do with Republicans holding things up than the inability of Democrats to get things past Republican attempts at obstruction.
Congressional approval just asks how happy you are with how Congress is doing it’s job, not who you’re putting the blame on if you don’t think Congress is doing a good job. Most people automatically assume that if people don’t like Congress, they don’t like the congressional majority, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a safe assumption to make.
