Senate Business As Usual

Well, the cloture vote on moving to a final up or down vote on the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (as opposed to U.N. Ambassador to the United States) failed this evening by a final tally of 56-42, which would have been 58-41 had Arlen Specter not blown town early and Bill Frist not changed his vote to the "winning" side so as to gain the right to schedule the next attempt at closing off debate. Yes, that's still two votes short, but my fingers needed the exercise.

This is no surprise for at least two reasons.

One, I read a week or two ago that the head count on Bolton's nomination was 58-42 in favor, so the fact that there were forty-two votes against cloture is consistent with the estimate.

Two, the Democrats were always going to filibuster Bolton - no matter what they said a whole, whopping forty-eight hours earlier - and if they hadn't been before, they sure as hell were after using Supreme Chancellor McCain and his six dimwitted droids to squash Bill Frist like a grape Monday night.

Reportedly de facto Majority Leader Harry Reid verbally pissed himself again after the vote, but frankly it's hard for me to muster the partisan energy to ridicule that pie-eyed pissant anymore because, after all, he played Bill Frist like a ten-cent flute. Besides, if I have to listen to that insufferable pencil-neck gloat any more, I'm liable to burn him in effigy and mail him the ashes.

As for what majority (heh) Republicans can do two weeks from now to dislodge this latest deliberative tumor, let the fightin' words of Dr. Schlock speak for themselves:

It certainly sounds like a filibuster. It quacks like a filibuster. It does disappoint me...We are going to come back to this issue...but I think what America has just seen is an engagement of another period of obstruction by the other side...once again, another filibuster...

Oooooh, that'll make the Dems and RINOs knock their knees together in paralyzed terror, huh?

UPDATE: Ho, boy, I'd clean forgotten about this blurb (via B4B) from this morning:

Republicans face another showdown vote but seem confident of muscling John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador through the Senate, giving the post to the man President Bush says will reform the world organization.

Goodness, if that didn't telegraph the debacle de jour, nothing else could.