The Senate voted overwhelmingly to condemn the MoveOn ad that appeared in the NYT last week. Final tally was 72-25. Hillary Clinton was among those voting against the resolution.
Correct me if I’m wrong here. But by my calculation, more U.S. senators (72) voted today to condemn a newspaper ad attacking Gen. Petraeus than voted yesterday (56) to lengthen the time off troops get from the frontlines in Iraq, thereby reducing individual soldiers exposure to actual attacks. Am I missing something, or is that about right?
I think TPM Reader MW has a pretty good read on the lay of the political landscape:
Something that strikes me about the Republican use of filibusters is that they have no effect on actual outcome. That is, everything that the Republicans have filibustered would have been vetoed by Bush anyway. So, filibuster or not, the end result is the same. This is in striking contrast to the Democrat’s use in the last term, where the filibuster was the only thing standing between a law or an appointment going through.
So, why do they do it? I think they are engaging in obstructionism because most people don’t pay much attention to legislative details. All they know is that Democrats have not passed a bill. A veto, on the other hand, makes more news and sets up the Democrats as being in opposition to Bush. Republicans are well aware that people dislike congress because congress has not done enough to oppose Bush. So, I think their use of the filibuster is intended to portray Democrats as being ineffective.
This explains Warner’s vote on troop dwell time. Whether he voted for it or not, it wasn’t going to be enacted. So, being a Republican not up for reelection (and I think most Democrats would do the same) he chose to stick it to the opposing party rather than cast a vote that has no effect in the end.
In any case Republican claims that “Democrats did it last term” are
laughable, since Bush was then and still is president.
Lots of readers have written in to urge that Democrats actually force the Republicans to filibuster, not merely cave at the threat. The prospect of a presidential veto is, in part, what makes that a pointless exercise for the Democrats. So for all the frustration about not being able to achieve a 60 vote majority, remember that 67 votes is the real bar to overcome.
Sure, a year is an eternity in politics. But a lot of the playing field for the 2008 congressional election is being defined today. In today’s episode of TPMtv we look at the rash of Republican congressional retirements and how it’s stacking the deck for 2008 …
Since President Bush’s poll numbers have been in the toilet for something like forever at this point, Republicans (and various pundit sycophants) have desperately clung to Congress’s extremely low levels of approval. In many polls, Congress’s numbers are actually lower than the president’s.
But Eric Kleefeld’s got a great catch here: According to the latest Gallup poll, more Republicans approve of Congress’s performance than Democrats. Actually, by a pretty substantial amount. So while it’s not at all good news for elected Democrats, it’s pretty clearly even worse news for Republicans, since the real energy behind Congress’s unpopularity seems to stem from Democrats who don’t believe the Congress is being aggressive enough in standing up to President Bush.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) went on Fox yesterday to explain his comment that we were paying a “small price” in Iraq. Go watch.*
*Ed. Note: You’ll notice that for this segment Fox grabbed TPM video which was grabbed from CNN, meaning the TPM logo is right there running on Fox News. Weird.
Well, look who just walked in the door at TPMCafe. At Greg Anrig’s invitation, Grover Norquist (yes, THAT Grover Norquist) is joining the discussion on Greg’s new book, The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.
Could the noose finally be tightening on Boss DeLay? Not looking good for the Bug Man.
Am I the only one embarrassed by the dingbat brouhaha over Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s attempt to visit Ground Zero to lay a wreath? Given relations between our countries I could see denying him a visa, but as long as we’re hosting the UN that’s not an option. Ahmadinejad now says he’s “amazed” that such a visit would be insulting to Americans. Sen. McCain said that Ahmadinejad should be “physically restrained if necessary” from visiting the site. The National Review’s Kathryn Lopez got worked up in such a lather that she begged Rudy Giuliani to “lead a human blockade keeping Ahmadinejad from getting to Ground Zero” — thus demonstrating once and for all Rudy’s true calling as the surrogate id of right-wing nerds everywhere.
So what’s the problem exactly? Presumably we can be frank enough to acknowledge that the real issue here is that while Ahmadinejad is not Arab to most of us he looks pretty Arab. And he is Muslim certainly — and pretty up in arms about it at that. And we officially don’t like him. And we classify the country he runs as a state sponsor of terrorism. So even though he has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, when you put all these key facts together, he might as well have done it himself. And what business does anyone with the blood of the victims of 9/11 on his hands have going to Ground Zero?
That’s basically it and don’t tell me it’s not.
Alternatively I guess it’s that he’s a very mean guy, said bad things about Israel or questioned the Holocaust? Is this man any worse than the various Soviet dignitaries who we feted and hosted around our country? Or is it simply that we’ve grown increasingly infantile as a country since the end of the Cold War, more and more obsessed and histrionic about minor powers like Iran and Iraq?
A president with some dignity and sense of the greatness of his country would say, good he should go there. Maybe he’ll learn something about us and our loss.
If we as a country were a person, I’d say grow up. Act like a man
* Yes, outdated language. But I know no non-gendered language that conveys the same meaning.