‘Unprecedented’ hypocrisy

November 2, 2005

I don’t want to belabor yesterday’s closed session controversy, but there’s one part of the Republicans’ response that warrants follow-up.

As GOP senators rushed to microphones yesterday, most of them purple with rage, the buzz word was “unprecedented.” Harry Reid was closing the Senate without having notified Republicans in advance, which as they explained it, is not the norm.

Republicans condemned the Democrats’ maneuver, which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party.

True? As far as I can tell, yes. Relevant? I can’t see how. As Reid told reporters, “I’m sorry [Frist is] disappointed in my following Senate procedures. It was our way of getting to the bottom of something that was long overdue.”

If I understand the point Republicans were trying to make, Reid did something unusual by calling for a closed session without telling his friends on the other side of the aisle first. As they tell it, this undermines trust, strains inter-party relations, and ignores certain traditions that Congress is supposed to respect.

It’s more than a little amusing to hear congressional Republicans worrying about such niceties. Which party likes to hold open five-minute votes indefinitely until the get the results they want? Which party prevents the minority from offering amendments (.pdf) to legislation? Which party forbids the minority from participating in conference committees? Which party shuts down committee hearings went they start to become politically inconvenient? Which party decided that the Senate leader of one party could campaign against the Senate leader of the other party for the first time in American political history?

Republicans want to lecture Dems about decorum and polite floor tactics? Are they kidding?

This is an excellent post, and the point should be made repeatedly: it is the Republican side that has trod heavily over civil procedures in the Congress, both House and Senate, and the Democrats who have (for too long) observed protocol. The Republicans are starting to reap what they’ve sowed–and what a bunch of cry-babies they are! Contemptible.

  • Great points CB, hypocrisy has always been, and will always be the common denominator for the GOP and BushCo. Anything they they accuse the other side of usally turns out to be something they are ten times as guilty of.
    Analytical Liberal has a very good description of them.

  • LeisureGuy,

    Contemptible AND predictable — the bully always cries when his own tactics are used by his “former” victims to beat the shit out of him! Crybabies indeed…

    And Mr. CB, thanks for the short collection of citations and links to remind us of the thuggish tactics used over and over by the Rethug Party (including the American Taliban puppeteers and the K Street lackies) to undermine our democracy and effectively neuter (at least) one-half of the American electorate (i.e., those who are represented by duly elected Dems).

    If there is a Political God of Just Deserts, there will be a bountiful harvest of Rethug carcasses nailed to the wall, which we can then sweep into the trash bin of history…

  • And let’s not forget Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous Senate floor directive to Senator Patrick Leahy that he should go have intercourse with himself. Now THERE’S class for you.

  • am i missing something here. Why did the GOP respond to this at all? Doesn’t it make them look worse that they were so angry that power was wrested for them for two hours. If they had all gone to the microphone and said “the democrats pulled a silly stunt, and closed the session for two hours, but now we are back to working normally, and we hope to work together with them in the future in the best interests of all americans”, it seems like there would have been no story there. I am not a GOP strategist, but it seems like they didn’t think too hard before they rushed to the mikes. a dangerous and dumb thing to do.

  • against established procedure? Gasp! you mean we should honor Senate traditions like, oh, i dunno – the filibuster? Reid’s “stunt” works on so many levels it was just brilliant. and as Natan correctly notes, the R’s let their tempers get the best of them and gave the story legs – pushing Alito further into the background. truly hilarious. how Frist thinks he can run the country when he can’t remotely run the Senate is beyond me.

    lets hope Reid’s gem works at one more level as well: showing his own caucus that the R’s, despite having numbers, can be beaten tactically, and trying to filibuster Alito and retain the right to filibuster is not impossible, in part because of Frist’s ineptness.

  • I recommend reading or a re-reading of the Sinclair Lewis cannon. You will be suprised how well it has held-up over the past 85 or so years. This is the America that Republicans since Reagan have wanted us to return to.
    I
    f you don’t have time to read the whole cannon, I suggest at a minimum reading “Babbitt” and “It Can’t Happen Here”.

  • Harry Reid should be on Mount Rushmore after yesterday. Standing up to tyranny (which is precisely what the Republican fascists in Congress are creating) is a time-honored American tradition. May God bless him.

    As far as these pansy GOP whiners, let them whine. Like most bullies, when they get a fist right in their nose, they start crying. We may be witnessing the crumbling of the GOP facade of leadership that has been built over the past twelve years.

  • The Repubs’ rush to the :::::cough cough::::: “liberal media” to whine for support sure shows their hind-end as my mother would say.

    (Never in our history has this country had a “liberal media” – since the word “media” denotes the whole.)

    The Repubs’ rush for support from the MSM media proves that the MSM media in this country has been “bought” by the Republican right-wing. (Why would the most extreme right-wing, Frist, Santorum, etc., run to the arms of a liberal, left-wing media for support?)

    MSM = not mainstream

  • Can Frist whine and pout a little more. For pity’s sake be a man and admit you were outmanouvered (admittedly not hard in Frist’s case apparantly).

  • Reid’s move yesterday was a stroke of genius. And the idiot Republican leadership, such as it is, played right into his hands. If Democrats swarmed the microphones every time the Republicans ignored procedure they’d have little time to do anything else.

    Hypocrites, cry-babies, bullies, pussies…so many shoes fit the Republican foot!

  • Senator Frist had better clamp his teeth down a little harder on that Majority Leader pacifier he likes to suck on. Harry Reid snuck up and stole it out of his blowhole and now that he knows how easy it was, he might just come get it again.

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