What happens when the vaunted discipline of GOP lawmakers breaks down on the eve of a crucial election? Chaos.
With less than three weeks left in this session of Congress, the White House has mounted an unusual full-court press on House and Senate Republicans to get its most dubious intelligence programs under some veil of legitimacy. But the unity they once found among the Capitol Hill GOP — especially on national security matters — is gone.
Vice president Cheney made a rare visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday; President Bush made an even rarer appearance before Hill GOP today. Former British PM Margaret Thatcher has even joined in the push. But their legislative agenda has all but disappeared in a furball of competing bills, parliamentary maneuvers, head-spinning position shifts and plain old dissent. And it’s almost entirely Republicans turning on their own.
In the Senate, Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner (R-VA) is ignoring White House concerns over detainee treatment, and introducing his own bill — backed by two other Republicans — that would put up tougher restrictions on how prisoners were interrogated and prosecuted.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has a White House-friendly bill on the same issue.
But instead of introducing it in Warner’s committee, where it would face an uncertain future, Frist has made parliamentary preparations to bypass Warner’s panel and send the bill directly to the Senate floor. Why twist arms when you can twist the process?
In another neat parliamentary trick, Frist introduced a separate bill — S. 3886 — which looks like an “omnibus” of White House-friendly NSA and detainee bills. Will that move instead of the separate bills out of Specter’s and Warner’s committees? Who knows.
Over in the Senate Judiciary Committee, chairman Arlen Specter helped the White House by moving to the full Senate his “compromise” NSA bill, which has language to allow the administration to continue its warrantless spying almost as unfettered as before. But Specter also voted for (in fact, co-sponsored) a competing bill from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), that would do more to rein in the program. Call it a two-pronged approach — even if, like Frist’s gambits, they go in different directions.
In the House, GOP leaders had backed a proposal from Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), herself a former Air Force officer and White House aide, that would place certain restrictions on Bush’s NSA program. But at the last minute, those leaders “abruptly canceled” a vote on the bill — after the White House brought intense and direct pressure to bear.
In the House Armed Services Committee, chairman Duncan Hunter gave the White House its only clean win of the day, pushing through a White House-friendly bill on detainee treatment and prosecution. But with the issue facing such an uncertain future in the Senate, will that translate into a legislative victory? Who knows.
And if that weren’t enough, groups like the ACLU have their eye on a hearing today in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is expected to address the possibility of “preventative detention” — giving expanded powers to U.S. law enforcement to hold people without charges for weeks at a time. Will that result in legislation? Who knows.
It can’t be easy getting so many people to do what you want in such a short period of time. Especially because they’ve been taking your cues for five years — and they’re increasingly likely to lose their grip on power because of it.
