MINO
I commented over two months ago on the Margolis sites that despite lacking the White House and being in the minority in both houses of Congress by double-digit margins, the Democrats are still running the country. Needless to say, that drew me quite a bit of heat from my erstwhile ideological compatriots. But it's my hobby (hey, I don't earn my living from this stuff, no matter what that Google ad strip on the sidebar might lead one to believe) to call it like I see it. And nothing I've seen since then has done anything but reinforce that conclusion.
~ ~ ~
Case in point #1 - they've stuffed cloture on the John Bolton nomination once again:
Get a load of this chest-thumping:
One could also argue that it is totally unacceptable for the Senate to dictate to the President the staffing of the Executive Branch. "Advise and consent" is a passive function, not an active one.
This isn't to suggest that Biden was the sole designated anti-Bolton demagogue:
Silly Donk - there is no nominee whom both the White House and people like Dodd and Biden could support because the President is not going to turn over the Executive Branch to a tribunal of opposition Senate power-grabbers, and the minority party is not going to stop blocking everything Bush sends to the Hill across the board, just on partisan spite alone. There aren't enough documents in the entirety of Foggy Bottom to satisfy the Dems because documents aren't really what they're after. Shafting John Bolton is, and they'd massacre entire forests to do so if that's what it took. And when that was done they'd just jump to the next excuse. It's the new guise of the old filibuster, and everybody knows it.
Except the alleged majority, that is:
Never mind that that's supposed to be Senate 'Pubbies' job. And that they're so incompetent at it that the effort borders on futility.
If you thought Roberts was lame, well....
Sounds like a back-bencher, doesn't he? The man ought to be breathing fire, and what we get instead of a sort of sighing resignation. You bet your bunions they're obstructing a highly qualified nominee and hurting our country in the process - so what are you going to do about it, Senator Frist? Isn't doing something about it part of your job description?
He apparently forgot that, at least for a while:
It really says something about how piss-poor a "leader" Dr. Doofus is that he needs to scurry down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue with his tail between his legs for pep talks. And, to be fair, it doesn't say a whole lot more about the chief resident at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that he isn't willing to just flip the Democrats both middle fingers and send Bolton to Turtle Bay on a recess appointment and be done with it - though the White House isn't officially ruling it out.
~ ~ ~
Ted Kennedy, however, has ruled out even the possibility of Clarence Thomas' elevation to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice, or so he has proclaimed:
Well, that's it, then. The President has his marching orders. The Massachusetts Manatee has spoken.
Who does the latter think he is? Why, he's King Edward the Corpulent, and that barbeque jockey from Crawford will learn his place if his majesty has to waddle down to the Oval Office and sit on him personally. And what's the President to say? His arch enemy in the Senate sold him and the rest of his party out on the confirmation filibuster. His hands are tied.
~ ~ ~
That rafter of betrayal is beginning to take on a life of its own:
Well, who the bloody hell is wielding the knife this time?
The Murray piece adds Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) to the burgeoning RINO roster.
He concludes:
It's galling, alright. But it is no more surprising once you realize that the reason Republicans don't know how to wield majority power is because at heart, they aren't comfortable with it and are almost viscerally repelled by their possession of it. It's like the man who dreamed of being rich his whole life, and then hits the lottery, and discovers all the baggage that comes along with vast wealth. If you can develop a taste, even affinity, for that baggage, you've got it made, but otherwise you find yourself wishing you were "poor" again just to be rid of it all.
Being in total power in a town whose culture is utterly hostile to them is something to which most Republicans are proving unable to reconcile themselves. So some of them are taking the short-term path of least resistance: trying (futiley) to appease their minority party colleagues and the Extreme Media by turning heel and selling out. This is the very definition of "Republicans In Name Only." And it can only get them back to where they once were - out of power.
However, for the Democrats - aka the MINO (minority in name only), today's political alignment gives them the best of all worlds. They're running the show like they did in years gone by through alternately pulling RINO strings and bullying the remaining Pachyderms into cowering submission. They've stalled virtually the entire Bush/GOP agenda and are advancing some of their own planks like untrammeled federal funding for embryo destruction/experimentation and energy rationing, with more health care socialization not far behind. And the facade of minority status relieves them of any responsibility for their outrageously seditious behavior, as with their blatant fifth-columnism on the GWOT.
All of the above leads to one brutal, inescapable conclusion: America, circa 2005, does not have a party of the Right. There's a party of the Left (the Democrats) and a party of the Center (Republicans). The remainder of the political spectrum has become functionally disenfranchised.
You won't find that in any official proclamation or party circular. But that's rapidly becoming the practical effect of unified GOP governance. And it is not what most of the Republican base voted for last November.
Thank God for George W. Bush. And may God bless and uphold that man, as he is inexorably becoming a man without a party - through no fault of his own.
[Hat tips: Blogs for Bush, GOP Bloggers, RealClearPolitics]
~ ~ ~
Case in point #1 - they've stuffed cloture on the John Bolton nomination once again:
Senate Democrats blocked John Bolton's confirmation as U.N. ambassador for the second time Monday...The vote was 54-38, six shy of the total needed to force a final vote on Bolton and represented an erosion in support from last month's failed Republican effort.
Get a load of this chest-thumping:
Democrats have demanded the Administration check a list of 36 U.S. officials against names in secret national security intercepts that Bolton requested and received. They also want documents related to the preparation of testimony that Bolton planned to give in the House in July 2003 about Syria's weapons capability.
In remarks on the Senate floor, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, lead Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said White House Chief Staff Andrew Card had offered to provide some information about Syria. He said Democrats would give Bolton a final confirmation vote only when the Administration provided all the information they seek.
"The vote we're about to take is not, is not about John Bolton, the vote is about taking a stand," Biden said. He called it "totally unacceptable" for the President - no matter the political party - to "dictate to the Senate on how we should proceed." [emphasis added]
One could also argue that it is totally unacceptable for the Senate to dictate to the President the staffing of the Executive Branch. "Advise and consent" is a passive function, not an active one.
This isn't to suggest that Biden was the sole designated anti-Bolton demagogue:
"I would strongly encourage the Administration tonight to move on, to give us another nominee, someone who the Administration can support, that we can support here," Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of the leading opponents to Bolton, said.
Silly Donk - there is no nominee whom both the White House and people like Dodd and Biden could support because the President is not going to turn over the Executive Branch to a tribunal of opposition Senate power-grabbers, and the minority party is not going to stop blocking everything Bush sends to the Hill across the board, just on partisan spite alone. There aren't enough documents in the entirety of Foggy Bottom to satisfy the Dems because documents aren't really what they're after. Shafting John Bolton is, and they'd massacre entire forests to do so if that's what it took. And when that was done they'd just jump to the next excuse. It's the new guise of the old filibuster, and everybody knows it.
Except the alleged majority, that is:
Some Republicans urged Bush to continue fighting for Bolton rather than appoint him on his own during an upcoming Senate recess for fear of sending a weakened nominee to the United Nations. "That would not be in our best interest," said Senator Pat Roberts, R-KS, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Never mind that that's supposed to be Senate 'Pubbies' job. And that they're so incompetent at it that the effort borders on futility.
If you thought Roberts was lame, well....
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN, accused Democrats of being unwilling to compromise.
"Some on the other side of the aisle are obstructing a highly qualified nominee and I believe by not allowing him to assume this position yet are doing harm to our country," Frist said.
Sounds like a back-bencher, doesn't he? The man ought to be breathing fire, and what we get instead of a sort of sighing resignation. You bet your bunions they're obstructing a highly qualified nominee and hurting our country in the process - so what are you going to do about it, Senator Frist? Isn't doing something about it part of your job description?
He apparently forgot that, at least for a while:
Majority Leader Bill Frist reversed course on John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday, after earlier declaring the prospect of a floor vote dead in the water.
Frist's about-face came after a White House luncheon in which President Bush persuaded Senate Republicans to schedule another vote and break a deadlock set by Democrats.
"That's been exhausted," Frist said earlier Tuesday regarding his attempts to break a stalemate that has held up the nominee for months.
But after meeting with Bush, Frist came out to the cameras stationed at the White House and said he would schedule a third vote to end debate and vote for confirmation.
"The President made it very clear that he expects an up or down vote," he said, adding that Democratic resistance has nothing to do with Bolton, but everything to do with resentment toward the President.
It really says something about how piss-poor a "leader" Dr. Doofus is that he needs to scurry down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue with his tail between his legs for pep talks. And, to be fair, it doesn't say a whole lot more about the chief resident at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that he isn't willing to just flip the Democrats both middle fingers and send Bolton to Turtle Bay on a recess appointment and be done with it - though the White House isn't officially ruling it out.
~ ~ ~
Ted Kennedy, however, has ruled out even the possibility of Clarence Thomas' elevation to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice, or so he has proclaimed:
Kennedy, 73, said he believes that the consideration on Rehnquist's replacement should be more than just "replacing one right-winger for a right-winger." Still, the Senate debate on any Rehnquist replacement would "clearly" be much different than the discussion about a nominee who would tip the ideological balance of the court.
"It's clear it's going to have a significant impact" on the Senate debate that "Rehnquist is leaving and not" one of the court's moderates, the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview.
He added that he thinks that two sitting justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, "would be completely troublesome" as nominees. He ruled out any possibility of Thomas being selected, while acknowledging that Scalia might be harder to defeat. [emphasis added]
Well, that's it, then. The President has his marching orders. The Massachusetts Manatee has spoken.
Who does the latter think he is? Why, he's King Edward the Corpulent, and that barbeque jockey from Crawford will learn his place if his majesty has to waddle down to the Oval Office and sit on him personally. And what's the President to say? His arch enemy in the Senate sold him and the rest of his party out on the confirmation filibuster. His hands are tied.
~ ~ ~
That rafter of betrayal is beginning to take on a life of its own:
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced to the world that he was going to make global warming a focus of his G8 chairmanship, few would have expected that the likely result would be agreement with President Bush. Yet staunch and principled diplomacy from the president and his team, combined with Blair's willingness to listen, have resulted in the draft declaration on the subject, as widely reported, endorsing the President's policies rather than any of the economy-destroying Kyoto-like policies embraced by Jacques Chirac and his cronies for decades. Unfortunately, at the very last minute it is possible that Republicans in the U.S. Senate could stab the president in the back by endorsing the Chirac stance for trivial reasons. The President and the American economy deserve better treatment from our most senior elected representatives.
Well, who the bloody hell is wielding the knife this time?
John McCain is promoting a bill that mandates emissions be cut to 2000 levels by 2010. Democrat Senator Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico) has proposed a competing bill that wouldn't reduce the absolute level of carbon-dioxide emissions, but their rate of increase. The game is to get any restriction, no matter how piddling, on carbon-dioxide emissions. As environmental analyst Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute argues, the debate then will forevermore be not whether emissions should be capped, but by how much. Thus, the U.S. will enter a new era of restrictions on its energy consumption.
The Murray piece adds Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) to the burgeoning RINO roster.
He concludes:
It is no surprise that Democrats want to see an embarrassed President, but it is a galling sight to see leading Senate Republicans ready to tear the clothes off the President's back.
It's galling, alright. But it is no more surprising once you realize that the reason Republicans don't know how to wield majority power is because at heart, they aren't comfortable with it and are almost viscerally repelled by their possession of it. It's like the man who dreamed of being rich his whole life, and then hits the lottery, and discovers all the baggage that comes along with vast wealth. If you can develop a taste, even affinity, for that baggage, you've got it made, but otherwise you find yourself wishing you were "poor" again just to be rid of it all.
Being in total power in a town whose culture is utterly hostile to them is something to which most Republicans are proving unable to reconcile themselves. So some of them are taking the short-term path of least resistance: trying (futiley) to appease their minority party colleagues and the Extreme Media by turning heel and selling out. This is the very definition of "Republicans In Name Only." And it can only get them back to where they once were - out of power.
However, for the Democrats - aka the MINO (minority in name only), today's political alignment gives them the best of all worlds. They're running the show like they did in years gone by through alternately pulling RINO strings and bullying the remaining Pachyderms into cowering submission. They've stalled virtually the entire Bush/GOP agenda and are advancing some of their own planks like untrammeled federal funding for embryo destruction/experimentation and energy rationing, with more health care socialization not far behind. And the facade of minority status relieves them of any responsibility for their outrageously seditious behavior, as with their blatant fifth-columnism on the GWOT.
All of the above leads to one brutal, inescapable conclusion: America, circa 2005, does not have a party of the Right. There's a party of the Left (the Democrats) and a party of the Center (Republicans). The remainder of the political spectrum has become functionally disenfranchised.
You won't find that in any official proclamation or party circular. But that's rapidly becoming the practical effect of unified GOP governance. And it is not what most of the Republican base voted for last November.
Thank God for George W. Bush. And may God bless and uphold that man, as he is inexorably becoming a man without a party - through no fault of his own.
[Hat tips: Blogs for Bush, GOP Bloggers, RealClearPolitics]
posted by JASmius at 4:51 PM
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