And then there were seven

January 23, 2006

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) became the latest Senate Republican to raise legal questions about the president’s warrantless-search program.

Wallace: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps.

McCain: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this all out. I don’t think — I know of no member of Congress, frankly, who, if the administration came and said here’s why we need this capability, that they wouldn’t get it. And so let’s have the hearings.

By my count, that brings the total of Senate Republicans who don’t believe the president had the lawful authority to engage in this surveillance to seven: Specter (Pa.), Graham (S.C.), Hagel (Neb.), Snowe (Maine), Lugar (Ind.), Brownback (Kan.), and now, McCain.

The point, of course, is that we’re talking about bi-partisan criticism. Karl Rove is desperate to convince the nation that Dems don’t want any surveillance against suspect terrorists — a demonstrable lie — but the fact is, the body of critics against the president’s program is growing and spans the ideological spectrum.

A number of Republicans have joined Democrats in challenging the surveillance program, pointedly reminding the administration that precedents established today will be in place whenever a Democrat returns to power.

“A lot of Democrats?” said one prominent Republican supporter of Mr. Bush, who did not want to be identified while being critical of a White House that famously does not brook criticism. “Democrats, Karl? Republicans, too.”

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: “A lot of conservatives are very skeptical about it. It is not as clean-cut a political win as the administration thinks that it is.”

Not even close.

Remember, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) has blasted the legality of the program — and there’s nothing liberal about them. The group includes former Rep. and Clinton-impeachment manager Bob Barr (R-Ga.); Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation; and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.

Let’s also not forget, Bruce Fein, a conservative constitutional scholar and former deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration, said that the president is flouting the Constitution and may have committed an impeachable offense. Norm Ornstein, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, echoed Fein, saying, “I think if we’re going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed.”

The White House will be desperate to spin this scandal as a partisan affair. It’s not.

“McCain: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this all out. I don’t think — I know of no member of Congress, frankly, who, if the administration came and said here’s why we need this capability, that they wouldn’t get it. And so let’s have the hearings.”

I think McCain isn’t questioning the policy so much as exhorting the administration to come to the rubber stamp Congress to do it legally. But why bother to go through the motions of having checks and balances when Congress rolls over so easily? Who can blame the administration for not caring enough to even go through the charade? McCain knows of “no member of Congress” who has balls or even the conviction to do his/her job as the Constitution sets out. And, sadly, neither do I. Pathetic. A Republic if you can keep it…

  • I’m not so impressed with McCain here either (yet again).

    McCain’s basically saying that the WH still needs to keep up the appearances of a constitutional republic & at least pretend to consult the Congress. Who will then rubberstamp whatever the Emperor desires and remind dissidents (like us) that the People authorized the President–he didn’t just take power for himself.

    I’ll have to hand it to the Bush administration. At least they’re more candid about their desire for a dictatorship than McCain is.

  • I agree completely with Frak and Mr. Flibble.
    And from the public’s point of view, Bush gets
    credit for cutting through all the crap and protecting
    Americans from the bad guys.

    And would the public vote to give Bush these
    expanded powers? Probably. I think even most
    Democrats would.

    So what do we have with spygate? The president,
    in his zeal to defend America, forgot to dot an i
    and cross a t.

    Big deal. There’s nothing here. It’s a lot of
    time wasted that ought to go toward determining
    if Bush lied our way into Iraq, and that’s
    probably why some Republicans welcome
    hearings. A diversion that goes nowhere,
    and keeps the people’s attention off Iraq and
    all the other horrible things this administration
    has done or not done.

  • Sorry folks, you are clouding the issue. Bush didn’t have to go to Congress. He had to go to FISA court.
    He had up to 72 hours AFTER the fact (wiretap) to notify the court of what was going on. He choose not to. He broke the law. End of discussion.

  • Jim,
    We all know that he broke the law–no one is arguing against that. But there must be a political coalition before the President can be held accountable for his illegal action. And there, I think, there is plenty of room for discussion. And I think Frak, hark, and I were objecting to the characterization that McCain is part of the opposition against Bush’s wiretapping.

    For myself, I was just trying to say that all McCain was whining about was that the WH would have been smarter to get a Congressional whitewash/blessing before going ahead, so as to convince the yokels that they gave up their liberties freely and “legally”. That hardly counts as “opposition” in my book, so I would not count him as a political ally in this matter.

  • If McCain and the other six Republican Senators are worried about executive overreach, they have to vote against Alito, presidential enabler supremo. They won’t.

    More broadly, the Rove Republicans remain absolutely abhorrent to our national conversation in their push to frame every disagreement as partisan, as us-vs.-them. If the PRCB people really stand up in this fight, I’ll be shocked–but also profoundly grateful, in that they’re arguing that some principles transcend partisanship.

  • Yes, Mr. Flibble, quite correct. McCain just wanted Bush to go to Congress for its fig leaf quotient. This way Bush could say that they knew about and agreed to his unlawful action. It’s strategy in the same vein as “they saw all the intelligence I did before going into Iraq” and “they signed off on war powers that entitle me do whatever I want” and “their ‘leaders’ were apprised of what I was doing so these partisan hacks already knew about it and thought it was okay.” This is the most cynical misuse of “government” we’ve seen in decades, if ever.

  • I think there may be some notion of retaining the powers of Congress and specifically the Repubs in Congress following the 2008 election by McCain. They want the next Prez to have to come to Congress, assuming that it is a Dem b/c Bush has screwed up the Repubs ability to steal it again. McCain may be saying that Bush would have received the rubberstamp, but the next guy still has to come through Congress and won’t necessarily get the rubberstamp. Maybe McCain believes that they can hold the Senate and/or House but not the Oval Office and just wants to prop Congress up for the next go-round.

  • GreyGuy,
    I’d buy that explanation, too, and it would fit in with Norquist’s group (whatever the hell it’s called–People for somethingorother) recent turning on the WH. There’s not so much concern about civil liberties as much as a rearguard spoiling action to restrain the Democrats should they become ascendant starting in ’06.

    Of course the GOP would treat this just like they have lobbying reform, with so many loopholes that whoever wins will be so tempted and corrupted that more scandals will happen.

    • Comments are closed.