Tuesday, May 24, 2005

The conventional option

I have to say that my reaction here is pretty much the same as Matt's. They get their three awful judges and we don't get to send the GOP legislative agenda to a nuclear winter wonderland. Reid's proposals for how we'd force votes on lots of stuff we liked that the GOP wouldn't swallow would've been fun to watch. In retrospect, I would've liked to see the Democrats make the substantive case against the judges themselves more. Why didn't we hear more about how Priscilla Owen let poor Willie Searcy die? Or about how Janice Brown more or less thought the New Deal was unconstitutional? Making the substantive case against the nominees probably would've done more to rally public opinion than institutionalist arguments about Senate procedure.

Everyone is talking about how this hurts Bill Frist. Here's what I'm thinking: it's time to declare an end to John McCain's hopes of ever becoming the GOP nominee. If you think Dobson's going to be mad at Frist for not delivering the goods, think how he'll feel about McCain robbing the train. This is one of the rare days when it's more fun to read the right-wing blogs than the left-wing ones:
So go ahead and bask in the praise, Lindsey Graham. Soak in the applause, John McCain. And all the rest of you turncoats...

Enjoy it now. We’re not going to forget this. Not now. Not ever.
And there goes your most electable future candidate. Conventional weapons are good for circular firing squads. I wonder if any of those northeastern GOP moderates will seek political asylum from Harry Reid. I leave you with words from Dobson himself:
This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a lot about Owen and Brown which wasn't discussed.

The National Women's Law Center elaborates upon some more specific examples: http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=2284§ion=newsroom

Blue said...

Hope you read my own entry on this Neil. http://rousseau.blogspot.com/2005/05/minor-reaction-to-senate-compromise.html

As to whether this is a "win" for dems... well it certainly makes PR sense for the dems to trumpet it as a win. The press loves a winner, since they're the minority they really expected nothing, it energizes our desperate base, it keeps us having some influence on SCOTUS nominee maybe.

However, this meme of all the liberal bloggers says "if Dobson hates it, ah love it" is far too tempting. How many times of ther past 6 years have we thought "Ha! we've finally divided the moderate GOP from their reactionary base, their power will crumble now. No one in america would vote simply for these crazy extremist." Sigh.