Dirty Harry Goes Nuclear
A few days ago I issued the following warning:
I was referring to the post-Byrd Option smear campaign against any and every conceivable potential Bush SCOTUS pick (and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee as well, I'm predicting), but shutting down the Senate altogether if and when Majority Leader Bill Frist triggered the Byrd Option certainly belongs in that category.
A lot of center-right bloggers, such as Ed Morrissey even this morning, didn't think the Donks would go through with it because of the obvious and dire political risks:
The problem with that analysis is that it assumes a hard core of reasonableness and rationality on the Democrat side of the aisle. But there isn't any, and hasn't been since the Florida Insurrection.
You have to remember that the Left's template after the 2000 election was the complete and total emasculation of the Bush presidency. Their aim was to throw aside all custom, restraint, and legal precedent in an all-out effort to deny George Bush the exercise of the office that they convinced themselves he didn't legitimately attain or occupy.
But things didn't work out the way they planned. 9/11 happened, Bush's popularity skyrocketed, he liberated Afghanistan, and then Iraq, he won the passage of every major piece of domestic legislation he pushed for, from tax cuts to prescription drugs.
But the Dems did succeed in stuffing him on his appellate court picks, first by bribing Jim Jeffords into tipping the Senate to their control in May 2001, which enabled the Judiciary Committee to stuff them across the board, and then by the unprecedented resort to the filibuster after this rank obstructionism cost them Senate control in 2002. The ultimate idea was that Bush would be easily defeated in 2004, and the clock would have been successfully run out on any chance of him reshaping to any extent at all the Imperial Judiciary.
But again, things didn't work out the way they planned. Dubya was re-elected, and picked up four more senate seats for his party, again, in significant part due to this continued, stubborn, obnoxious, rank obstructionism. Now he had another four years to rein in the robed oligarchy, and their cushion against the Byrd Option (mentioned in the last Congress but never attempted) had all but vanished.
And that brings us to the present day. The nominations of State Supremes Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen have been brought to the floor, and the minority hasn't even waited for their filibuster to be broken before "going nuclear" themselves:
I rather enjoy saying "See, I told you so." The Senate Dem caucus contains True Believers and people who don't want to cross them; it contains no statesmen. And they are behaving in as predictable a fashion as I, well, predicted, and for one fundamental reason: They have no choice. This is the corner they've painted themselves into, and they have no way out. If they tell the moonbats to kiss off, the moonbats will tear them limb from limb; if they do the moonbats' bidding, and Republicans aren't intimidated in the process, they'll keep getting massacred at the polls. The ultimate political Hobson's choice.
So, in all their extremist glory, they've moved onto the next obstructionist step in quite a novel fashion: Dirty Harry is, in essence, filibustering the outlawing of the minority's filibuster. After all, you can't debate and vote on judicial appointments, or codify a rule, if there's no Senate in which to do it. Or so their "reasoning" goes.
How long will he maintain the "Gingrich Option"? That's hard to say. You'd think it couldn't last long because of the near-impossibility of avoiding the inevitable PR blowback. I mean, with how cautious and deliberate Majority Leader Frist has been through this whole process, pointedly exhausting every possible avenue of legitimate compromise, Reid can hardly convincingly spin the move toward the Byrd Option as an "abuse of power." But that is another example of assuming reasonableness and rationality in the DisLoyal Opposition. And if they had anything left of either trait, they wouldn't have misapplied the filibuster in the first place.
If I had to guess, I'd say Reid's shutdown will last until his party's internal polling starts to crater. How long that will take is also anybody's guess, but I can't see it going beyond days, as opposed to weeks.
The numbers, in this case, don't lie, and the Democrats do not have them. Assuming Republicans remain resolute (certainly a big "if"), this will ultimately be their opponents' Waterloo, and the gotterdammerung of the latter's lingering majoritarian pretentions. They will finally begin to confront the reality that they are in the minority and why, and perchance start the soul-searching and reappraisal that they should have undertaken a decade ago.
It won't come out that way in their daily press releases, but the under-the-radar process will begin.
Or else they'll just hold their breath until Hillary's inauguration.
Sure will be a kick to see her sworn in by Chief Justice Scalia, though.
It's an overused expression bordering on cliche (Rush Limbaugh, for one, has beaten it to death), but Democrats right now really are in a panic. And rest assured that they have a political Samson complex on steroids. If they go down, they will not go down quietly."...The whole Republican Party should brace itself. If we think that breaking the filibuster constitutes "going nuclear," we haven't seen anything yet.
I was referring to the post-Byrd Option smear campaign against any and every conceivable potential Bush SCOTUS pick (and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee as well, I'm predicting), but shutting down the Senate altogether if and when Majority Leader Bill Frist triggered the Byrd Option certainly belongs in that category.
A lot of center-right bloggers, such as Ed Morrissey even this morning, didn't think the Donks would go through with it because of the obvious and dire political risks:
But what happens at the end of the Byrd Option, if successful? My guess is that the Democrats walk out on all confirmation debates involving nominees they dislike, in protest. The earlier threats to shut down the Senate made by Harry Reid have long since been dropped, as a number of the Democratic caucuses must have had nightmares about a repeat of 1995 and Newt Gingrich's miscalculation in doing the same thing to Bill Clinton.
The problem with that analysis is that it assumes a hard core of reasonableness and rationality on the Democrat side of the aisle. But there isn't any, and hasn't been since the Florida Insurrection.
You have to remember that the Left's template after the 2000 election was the complete and total emasculation of the Bush presidency. Their aim was to throw aside all custom, restraint, and legal precedent in an all-out effort to deny George Bush the exercise of the office that they convinced themselves he didn't legitimately attain or occupy.
But things didn't work out the way they planned. 9/11 happened, Bush's popularity skyrocketed, he liberated Afghanistan, and then Iraq, he won the passage of every major piece of domestic legislation he pushed for, from tax cuts to prescription drugs.
But the Dems did succeed in stuffing him on his appellate court picks, first by bribing Jim Jeffords into tipping the Senate to their control in May 2001, which enabled the Judiciary Committee to stuff them across the board, and then by the unprecedented resort to the filibuster after this rank obstructionism cost them Senate control in 2002. The ultimate idea was that Bush would be easily defeated in 2004, and the clock would have been successfully run out on any chance of him reshaping to any extent at all the Imperial Judiciary.
But again, things didn't work out the way they planned. Dubya was re-elected, and picked up four more senate seats for his party, again, in significant part due to this continued, stubborn, obnoxious, rank obstructionism. Now he had another four years to rein in the robed oligarchy, and their cushion against the Byrd Option (mentioned in the last Congress but never attempted) had all but vanished.
And that brings us to the present day. The nominations of State Supremes Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen have been brought to the floor, and the minority hasn't even waited for their filibuster to be broken before "going nuclear" themselves:
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s Communication Director Bob Stevenson today made the following statement in response to the Senate Democrats’ refusal to grant consent, effectively shutting down the Senate’s committees and preventing them from meeting after 11:30 a.m..
“What a difference a day makes. Less than 24 hours after he complained the Senate is ignoring issues important to Americans, Democrat Leader Harry Reid today threatened progress on an energy bill, a jobs bill, disaster relief, and a closed intelligence meeting.
“To close down the committees over the judges issue is not only counterproductive, it could hurt Americans looking for work or suffering at the gas pumps.
“Despite any differences over the judges, the American people want their government to continue working on issues important to them. They want the Senate to do its job.
“Despite his suggestions to the contrary, Senator Reid’s actions speak volumes. It would appear the Democrats’ threat to shut down the Senate has already begun.”
I rather enjoy saying "See, I told you so." The Senate Dem caucus contains True Believers and people who don't want to cross them; it contains no statesmen. And they are behaving in as predictable a fashion as I, well, predicted, and for one fundamental reason: They have no choice. This is the corner they've painted themselves into, and they have no way out. If they tell the moonbats to kiss off, the moonbats will tear them limb from limb; if they do the moonbats' bidding, and Republicans aren't intimidated in the process, they'll keep getting massacred at the polls. The ultimate political Hobson's choice.
So, in all their extremist glory, they've moved onto the next obstructionist step in quite a novel fashion: Dirty Harry is, in essence, filibustering the outlawing of the minority's filibuster. After all, you can't debate and vote on judicial appointments, or codify a rule, if there's no Senate in which to do it. Or so their "reasoning" goes.
How long will he maintain the "Gingrich Option"? That's hard to say. You'd think it couldn't last long because of the near-impossibility of avoiding the inevitable PR blowback. I mean, with how cautious and deliberate Majority Leader Frist has been through this whole process, pointedly exhausting every possible avenue of legitimate compromise, Reid can hardly convincingly spin the move toward the Byrd Option as an "abuse of power." But that is another example of assuming reasonableness and rationality in the DisLoyal Opposition. And if they had anything left of either trait, they wouldn't have misapplied the filibuster in the first place.
If I had to guess, I'd say Reid's shutdown will last until his party's internal polling starts to crater. How long that will take is also anybody's guess, but I can't see it going beyond days, as opposed to weeks.
The numbers, in this case, don't lie, and the Democrats do not have them. Assuming Republicans remain resolute (certainly a big "if"), this will ultimately be their opponents' Waterloo, and the gotterdammerung of the latter's lingering majoritarian pretentions. They will finally begin to confront the reality that they are in the minority and why, and perchance start the soul-searching and reappraisal that they should have undertaken a decade ago.
It won't come out that way in their daily press releases, but the under-the-radar process will begin.
Or else they'll just hold their breath until Hillary's inauguration.
Sure will be a kick to see her sworn in by Chief Justice Scalia, though.
posted by JASmius at 1:45 PM
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