Uh-Oh....
Drudge and Fox are announcing that the RINOs have struck.
Details to come, but this can't be good.
UPDATE 4:54PM PDT: We get cloture on Brown, Owen, and Pryor; don't know about the others. They get the "filibuster in extraordinary circumstances" loophole. No word on whether we gave up the Byrd Option.
UPDATE 5:05PM PDT: It appears that we did:
Powerline adds:
Captain Ed isn't happy either:
Ramesh Ponnuru isn't quite as apocalyptic:
My initial impression: Oh, yes, the decision has been made. And the RINOs made it for us. This, and not the Byrd Option, sets the precedent. It guarantees that Bill Frist will never, and I mean never, have the votes to break the filibusters that we know will resume after the confirmation of Judges Owen, Brown, and Pryor (assuming, of course, that they are confirmed).
So, there you go. My cynical insticts are confirmed yet again. The Gang of Seven has back-stabbed the Senate Majority Doofus and sliced off their own President's nuts and served them up to Harry Reid on a platter. Say goodbye to Chief Justice Scalia and say hello to Chief Justice Kennedy; say goodbye to any prayer of the federal Judiciary being restored to its proper constitutional function, and say hello to a moldy stream of judges that only a President Kerry would have loved.
It took five years, but John McCain has finally gotten his revenge.
POSTSCRIPT 1:18AM PDT 5/24: I went home after this post. Tried to mow the lawn. Ate dinner. Helped my daughter with her math homework. Didn't trust myself to blog, and the non-"Deal" blog fodder was forgettable anyway.
Sitting here now in the stillness and quiet of my den, I find myself wondering how such a disaster could happen.
I've posted and commented repeatedly over recent weeks and months that there's no defeat that Republicans can't pull out of victory's gullet. Tonight should tell you why. In a lot of ways this is a great deal worse than even the 1992 election debacle, because at least then we actually did lose. This self-mutilation came after the greatest triumph for the Republican Party in at least half a century. This was a comprehensive triumph driven more than any other single individual by the President himself.
And look at how seven senators of his own party have rewarded his loyal, courageous, steadfast efforts on their behalf.
I'm not even bothering to glance at all the [ED: language alert!] gleeful, unmitigated bullshit from the DisLoyal Opposition. It's just the same old bullshit uttered with a shit-eating grin. But, hell, I don't begrudge them their celebration - indeed, they've earned it. It's a stunning coup with you really think about it: lacking the White House, sane or competent party leaders, and being in the minority in both Houses of Congress by double-digit margins, the Democrats proved tonight once again that they are still running the country. They saw our glaring weakness - the cancerous RINO winglet - and exploited it devastatingly. They showed all the ruthlessness and effectiveness that we manifestly did not. I tip my hat to them.
No, the GOP's problem has always been, and has now been fully exposed as, an internal one. And what is most infuriating is that the RINOs are glorying in their treachery nearly as shamelessly as its Donk beneficiaries.
To recap a theme I struck a month or two back:
-In the late '90s, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have the White House; once they had that back, everything would be different;
So George Bush won the presidency in 2000. But the GOP lost a few Senate seats, and then Jim Jeffords was lured away, ceding majority control to the Dems.
-So, in Bush's first biennium, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have majority control in the Senate; once they had that back, everything would be different;
So the GOP campaigned in 2002 on the judicial confirmation issue and picked up two senate seats and got back majority control; time to rock & roll, right?
Wrong - Dems went nuclear by applying the filibuster to the confirmation process for the first time ever.
-So, in Bush's second biennium, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have a big enough Senate majority; once they had the numbers, everything would be different;
So Bush and the GOP campaigned in 2004 with the judicial confirmation issue again on the leading issue edge, and won across the board, picking up an additional four senate seats; finally, we were going to start kicking ass and taking names, right?
Wrong. Instead, Bill Frist dicked around for four months, pissed away all that post-election momentum, and now, instead of slapping down the insurrectionist minority and restoring the confirmation process to its proper constitutional role, we have this "Deal" that is to the judicial confirmation issue what the September 1938 Munich Agreement was to the Sudetenland question. And the GOP grassroots (along with the Constitution) are in the role of Czechoslavakia.
What this clinches for me is the pointlessness of supporting and voting for the GOP. Matt Margolis can prattle on to the point of asphyxiation about "giving till it hurts" and "the answer to this is to elect even more Republicans," and he'll still miss (or deliberately ignore) this core reality: There's no such thing as electing "enough" Republicans because there will always be just enough RINOs to negate the remainder. Look at the seven Pachyderms who conspired in ripping GDub's stones right out of his scrotum (McCain, DeWine, Snowe, Warner, Graham, Collins, Chafee) - only three of them (Snowe, Collins, Chafee) are generally considered "conventional" RINOs, and of the remainder only McCain is an established "maverick." Yet to their number we now have to add Mike DeWine and Lindsey Graham, both fairly new additions to the GOP Senate caucus. And that doesn't include other RINOs of recent vintage like Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich, and "iconoclasts" like "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter.
You could conceivably get a hundred Republicans elected to the Senate, and you'd still have fifty-one RINOs who would keep pulling stunts like this. It just isn't arguable anymore.
That's why I can't get worked up about any particular one of the Gang of Seven. Sure, go after Chafee and Snowe and DeWine next year, and Collins and Graham in '08. Work your hearts out to torpedo McCain's 2008 presidential bid. More power to you. But it won't accomplish anything beyond venting spite, because RINOs are like dandelions - for every one you weed out, another will grow in its place. And in the mean time, remember that Frist didn't throw the hammer down on his caucus before this debacle broke this evening, so it's a guarantee that he won't exact any retribution for his own humiliation after the fact.
And that, in turn, is why he has failed as Majority Leader and why this majority itself is doomed.
The Powerline guys tell us what we can expect going forward:
Which, of course, they never will.
To borrow, and slightly alter, a couple of quotes from James Blish:
"For what the Gang of Seven did not know what that it had taken them a full year simply to announce their 'Deal'; that the entire galaxy had made its twenty-seventh rotation since its birth around its center during the course of their press conference; and that since then, it had gone around three and a third times more. For the Senate GOP and all within it, Time was slowing down on an asymptotic curve; and for Bill Frist, the chase would never end...and Frist would never know it."
"We in the grassroots are not vindictive; our justice is not based on vengeance. We simply observe that RINOs cannot be trusted to keep faith with the voters who elected them, even when given a clear majority mandate. We therefore rescind our 2006 financial and volunteer support, and with it your majority status, indefinitely.
"After another generation back in the political wilderness, Republicans may emerge as fit to wield majority power. I say may; it is entirely up to you. And so, farewell, Republicans - and Republican governance."
T'will be hard to miss something that was never really there.
Details to come, but this can't be good.
UPDATE 4:54PM PDT: We get cloture on Brown, Owen, and Pryor; don't know about the others. They get the "filibuster in extraordinary circumstances" loophole. No word on whether we gave up the Byrd Option.
UPDATE 5:05PM PDT: It appears that we did:
These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agreement would clear the way for yes-or-no votes on some of Bush's nominees, but make no guarantee.
Under the agreement, Democrats would pledge not to filibuster any of Bush's future appeals court or Supreme Court nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances."
For their part, Republicans agreed not to support an attempt to strip Democrats of their right to block votes.
Powerline adds:
What a hideous deal! The Democrats have agreed to cloture on only three nominees, and they have made no commitment not to filibuster in the future, if there are "extraordinary circumstances." Of course, the Dems think any nominee who is a Republican is "extraordinary." The Dems have just wriggled off the hook on some of the nominees that, politically, some of them did not want to be seen voting against.
Someone explain to me why the Republicans haven't been rolled once again. To me, it looks like a pathetic collapse on the part of the Republicans - not the leadership, but Senators like McCain who sold out their party.
Captain Ed isn't happy either:
So far, no one really has the agreement, but from what I've seen on television up to now, the GOP only got votes for 3 nominees and the Democrats still get to keep the judicial filibuster "under extraordinary circumstances."
This is the exact scenario that I foresaw when I heard that the centrists were gathering in the smoke-filled room. They coughed up the Constitution and got guaranteed votes on less than half of their nominees.
Reid: "This is a significant victory for our country..." No, it's a significant victory for Reid. He just smoked Frist, and now he's using that hard-won "comity" to blast Bush and Cheney for power grabbing and perverting the Constitution. Yeah, great going, GOP.
Reid: Filibusters will continue on Saad and Myers.
Ramesh Ponnuru isn't quite as apocalyptic:
This may have been a choice by 14 senators for comity, but its unintended consequence will be to raise the stakes on the next Supreme Court confirmation–which will decide what rules the Senate is really going to follow. A decision has been delayed, not made.
My initial impression: Oh, yes, the decision has been made. And the RINOs made it for us. This, and not the Byrd Option, sets the precedent. It guarantees that Bill Frist will never, and I mean never, have the votes to break the filibusters that we know will resume after the confirmation of Judges Owen, Brown, and Pryor (assuming, of course, that they are confirmed).
So, there you go. My cynical insticts are confirmed yet again. The Gang of Seven has back-stabbed the Senate Majority Doofus and sliced off their own President's nuts and served them up to Harry Reid on a platter. Say goodbye to Chief Justice Scalia and say hello to Chief Justice Kennedy; say goodbye to any prayer of the federal Judiciary being restored to its proper constitutional function, and say hello to a moldy stream of judges that only a President Kerry would have loved.
It took five years, but John McCain has finally gotten his revenge.
POSTSCRIPT 1:18AM PDT 5/24: I went home after this post. Tried to mow the lawn. Ate dinner. Helped my daughter with her math homework. Didn't trust myself to blog, and the non-"Deal" blog fodder was forgettable anyway.
Sitting here now in the stillness and quiet of my den, I find myself wondering how such a disaster could happen.
I've posted and commented repeatedly over recent weeks and months that there's no defeat that Republicans can't pull out of victory's gullet. Tonight should tell you why. In a lot of ways this is a great deal worse than even the 1992 election debacle, because at least then we actually did lose. This self-mutilation came after the greatest triumph for the Republican Party in at least half a century. This was a comprehensive triumph driven more than any other single individual by the President himself.
And look at how seven senators of his own party have rewarded his loyal, courageous, steadfast efforts on their behalf.
I'm not even bothering to glance at all the [ED: language alert!] gleeful, unmitigated bullshit from the DisLoyal Opposition. It's just the same old bullshit uttered with a shit-eating grin. But, hell, I don't begrudge them their celebration - indeed, they've earned it. It's a stunning coup with you really think about it: lacking the White House, sane or competent party leaders, and being in the minority in both Houses of Congress by double-digit margins, the Democrats proved tonight once again that they are still running the country. They saw our glaring weakness - the cancerous RINO winglet - and exploited it devastatingly. They showed all the ruthlessness and effectiveness that we manifestly did not. I tip my hat to them.
No, the GOP's problem has always been, and has now been fully exposed as, an internal one. And what is most infuriating is that the RINOs are glorying in their treachery nearly as shamelessly as its Donk beneficiaries.
To recap a theme I struck a month or two back:
-In the late '90s, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have the White House; once they had that back, everything would be different;
So George Bush won the presidency in 2000. But the GOP lost a few Senate seats, and then Jim Jeffords was lured away, ceding majority control to the Dems.
-So, in Bush's first biennium, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have majority control in the Senate; once they had that back, everything would be different;
So the GOP campaigned in 2002 on the judicial confirmation issue and picked up two senate seats and got back majority control; time to rock & roll, right?
Wrong - Dems went nuclear by applying the filibuster to the confirmation process for the first time ever.
-So, in Bush's second biennium, Republicans could cite as a legitimate excuse that they didn't have a big enough Senate majority; once they had the numbers, everything would be different;
So Bush and the GOP campaigned in 2004 with the judicial confirmation issue again on the leading issue edge, and won across the board, picking up an additional four senate seats; finally, we were going to start kicking ass and taking names, right?
Wrong. Instead, Bill Frist dicked around for four months, pissed away all that post-election momentum, and now, instead of slapping down the insurrectionist minority and restoring the confirmation process to its proper constitutional role, we have this "Deal" that is to the judicial confirmation issue what the September 1938 Munich Agreement was to the Sudetenland question. And the GOP grassroots (along with the Constitution) are in the role of Czechoslavakia.
What this clinches for me is the pointlessness of supporting and voting for the GOP. Matt Margolis can prattle on to the point of asphyxiation about "giving till it hurts" and "the answer to this is to elect even more Republicans," and he'll still miss (or deliberately ignore) this core reality: There's no such thing as electing "enough" Republicans because there will always be just enough RINOs to negate the remainder. Look at the seven Pachyderms who conspired in ripping GDub's stones right out of his scrotum (McCain, DeWine, Snowe, Warner, Graham, Collins, Chafee) - only three of them (Snowe, Collins, Chafee) are generally considered "conventional" RINOs, and of the remainder only McCain is an established "maverick." Yet to their number we now have to add Mike DeWine and Lindsey Graham, both fairly new additions to the GOP Senate caucus. And that doesn't include other RINOs of recent vintage like Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich, and "iconoclasts" like "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter.
You could conceivably get a hundred Republicans elected to the Senate, and you'd still have fifty-one RINOs who would keep pulling stunts like this. It just isn't arguable anymore.
That's why I can't get worked up about any particular one of the Gang of Seven. Sure, go after Chafee and Snowe and DeWine next year, and Collins and Graham in '08. Work your hearts out to torpedo McCain's 2008 presidential bid. More power to you. But it won't accomplish anything beyond venting spite, because RINOs are like dandelions - for every one you weed out, another will grow in its place. And in the mean time, remember that Frist didn't throw the hammer down on his caucus before this debacle broke this evening, so it's a guarantee that he won't exact any retribution for his own humiliation after the fact.
And that, in turn, is why he has failed as Majority Leader and why this majority itself is doomed.
The Powerline guys tell us what we can expect going forward:
I'm also doubtful that, even if the Republicans hold their own or gain seats in 2006, they will put an end to the filibusters. As noted above, they just don't have it in them.
The claim by Senator Graham and others that we need to get this issue behind us in order to proceed with the Senate's business is laughable. The Democrats will be emboldened by this "compromise" and will continue to obstruct. This Congress will accomplish little beyond what it already has, and that isn't much.
Finally, and most importantly, the President probably will be unable to get a Supreme Court Justice confirmed this session unless he appoints a moderate. And barring Republican gains in 2006, he probably will be unable to appoint a conservative Justice at all....
It would be hard to overstate what a disaster this is for the Republican Party....In a worst case scenario, it could rank along side the first President Bush's agreement to raise taxes. But at least in that case the President shot himself. In this case, seven Republican Senators shot him.The good news is that, one day, the practice of filibustering judicial nominees will be banned. The bad news is that this will not occur until the Democrats control the Senate and the Republicans are the ones filibustering.
Which, of course, they never will.
To borrow, and slightly alter, a couple of quotes from James Blish:
"For what the Gang of Seven did not know what that it had taken them a full year simply to announce their 'Deal'; that the entire galaxy had made its twenty-seventh rotation since its birth around its center during the course of their press conference; and that since then, it had gone around three and a third times more. For the Senate GOP and all within it, Time was slowing down on an asymptotic curve; and for Bill Frist, the chase would never end...and Frist would never know it."
"We in the grassroots are not vindictive; our justice is not based on vengeance. We simply observe that RINOs cannot be trusted to keep faith with the voters who elected them, even when given a clear majority mandate. We therefore rescind our 2006 financial and volunteer support, and with it your majority status, indefinitely.
"After another generation back in the political wilderness, Republicans may emerge as fit to wield majority power. I say may; it is entirely up to you. And so, farewell, Republicans - and Republican governance."
T'will be hard to miss something that was never really there.
posted by JASmius at 4:40 PM
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