Tantrum In A Vacuum

Okay, I admit it. My son is almost twelve years old, and when he doesn't get his way on something, he still throws himself on the floor, howls, and beats his hands and feet against the linoleum like a toddler. We haven't raised him that way; we haven't indulged him or rewarded such puerile behavior; to the contrary, we have sanctioned that conduct sternly and consistently. Hasn't mattered. Doesn't matter. He keeps doing it anyway. Hopefully it's just a grotesquely long phase that he'll eventually outgrow. At least he doesn't still suck his thumb.

As mortifying as my son is to us at times, what is one to make of the man, almost six times his age, who happens to occupy the job of Senate Minority Leader, and who acts pretty much the same way?

House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached year-end deals on a $42 billion budget-cuts package and a $453 billion defense-spending bill that includes a provision allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now Republican leaders just have to find the votes to pass the bills.

Senate Democrats will try to filibuster the spending bill, arguing that adding the drilling provision at the last minute was a perversion of Senate rules.

"These rules mean nothing. It's like a game of monopoly with grade-school kids. But this is the United States Senate," said Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, before using a parliamentary technique to shut down floor action all night.

He also said he would not consent to passing any of President Bush's pending nominations this year, which in effect blocks seven district court judges and the president's picks to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Dirty Harry is pissed. Why? Because after floundering through a series of embarrassing reversals and defeats, majority Republicans finally got back on their game. Last Friday the House passed an immigration reform bill that actually reforms immigration policy as well as tightening the borders, including constructing seven hundred miles of fortified border fence. Bill Frist has the votes to ram through the budget cuts. And GOPers on the House-Senate conference committee pulled the deft maneuver of attaching ANWR drilling, which had previously died in the House, to the budget bill, which [drumroll] cannot be filibustered under Senate rules.

It seems that Reid isn't the only one who knows how to use parliamentary rules to partisan advantage. That, combined with the harsh reality that Democrats are in the deep and indefinite minority, handed the Barney Fife doppelganger his parliamentary head on a couple of issues of not inconsiderable significance. So he howled in inarticulate rage, shut down the Senate again to no purpose beyond showing that he still could, and issued a tantrum of obstructionist threats that, with all the subtlety of twin extended middle fingers, can only antagonize and unify majority Republicans, make triggering of the confirmation filibuster ban more likely, and douse his party in the same petulant, extremist image that cost them so dearly in the last two election cycles.

You want a money Reid quote? Try this one on for size:

We've become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn't worked that way in 216 years.

Actually, Harry, it has - when Democrats have been in charge. Now, with Republicans running the show, your enthusiasm for democracy conspicuously evaporates. And your colleagues have the unmitigated brass to call Bush a "dictator"?

Now get up off the floor, wipe up your drool, and get the hell out of my sight.

[HT: CQ]