Suitably Flip

Senate Democrats: Opposition For Opposition's Sake

One of the guests (maybe Rudy?) on the post-speech Hannity & Colmes Wednesday night made the point that several Democratic leaders have called for a troop surge in recent months, but that when the President adopted the strategy, that party's members uniformly lamented it.  He made the point that if the President had proposed a reduction in forces, many of them would just as happily have found themselves trumpeting a surge as the only remedy and wondering solemnly why this President just. Doesn't. Get it.

The opposition for opposition's sake mindset shone through brilliantly last night, in the course of struggling over the Senate ethics reform bill.

Yesterday on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid was caught pulling out every stop to kill his own party's plan for earmark reform.
...
To Speaker Nancy Pelosi's credit, House Democrats recently passed ethics legislation that included provisions making earmarks more transparent. ... The ethics reform offered by Senate Democrats contained none of these tougher earmark provisions. So Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, cheekily took the identical language of the House earmark bill and offered it as an amendment to the Senate version. Numerous Democrats instantly denounced it, apparently unaware (or unconcerned) that the language had been sponsored by Ms. Pelosi.
...
When Senator DeMint then moved to have his amendment accepted by voice vote -- which is customary -- Mr. Durbin objected. The effect of these procedural run-arounds was to give Mr. Reid more time to twist a few more Democratic arms into killing earmark reform.

By our deadline last night, he still hadn't succeeded, though Senate sources told us that Mr. Reid was considering filing for cloture on the entire ethics bill, thereby foreclosing a vote on the current DeMint amendment. If he prevails, voters will know just much "fiscal discipline" to expect from the new majority.

Maybe Senate Democrats did indeed read through, carefully consider, and pass an honest judgment about "DeMint's" amendment.  If so, then they're not so much blind opposers as pork-happy anti-reformers.  Either way, not precisely the way they sold themselves during the campaign.

How many hours left in the 100 anyway?  I don't know how much more of this swamp-draining we can handle.  Thank goodness they took Monday off for football.  Maybe we can convince them to take the rest of the college basketball season off as well.

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Senate Democrats: Opposition For Opposition's Sake

One of the guests (maybe Rudy?) on the post-speech Hannity & Colmes Wednesday night made the point that several Democratic leaders have called for a troop surge in recent months, but that when the President adopted the strategy, that party's members uniformly lamented it.  He made the point that if the President had proposed a reduction in forces, many of them would just as happily have found themselves trumpeting a surge as the only remedy and wondering solemnly why this President just. Doesn't. Get it.

The opposition for opposition's sake mindset shone through brilliantly last night, in the course of struggling over the Senate ethics reform bill.

Yesterday on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid was caught pulling out every stop to kill his own party's plan for earmark reform.
...
To Speaker Nancy Pelosi's credit, House Democrats recently passed ethics legislation that included provisions making earmarks more transparent. ... The ethics reform offered by Senate Democrats contained none of these tougher earmark provisions. So Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, cheekily took the identical language of the House earmark bill and offered it as an amendment to the Senate version. Numerous Democrats instantly denounced it, apparently unaware (or unconcerned) that the language had been sponsored by Ms. Pelosi.
...
When Senator DeMint then moved to have his amendment accepted by voice vote -- which is customary -- Mr. Durbin objected. The effect of these procedural run-arounds was to give Mr. Reid more time to twist a few more Democratic arms into killing earmark reform.

By our deadline last night, he still hadn't succeeded, though Senate sources told us that Mr. Reid was considering filing for cloture on the entire ethics bill, thereby foreclosing a vote on the current DeMint amendment. If he prevails, voters will know just much "fiscal discipline" to expect from the new majority.

Maybe Senate Democrats did indeed read through, carefully consider, and pass an honest judgment about "DeMint's" amendment.  If so, then they're not so much blind opposers as pork-happy anti-reformers.  Either way, not precisely the way they sold themselves during the campaign.

How many hours left in the 100 anyway?  I don't know how much more of this swamp-draining we can handle.  Thank goodness they took Monday off for football.  Maybe we can convince them to take the rest of the college basketball season off as well.