Now that the brouhaha over Harry Reid’s closed session has subsided, it’s interesting to see the post-mortem by Senate Republicans. Initially, all the fury was directed at Reid, Durbin, and Schumer. After tempers cooled, however, Republicans started wondering aloud what, exactly, Majority Leader Bill Frist got them into.
ABC News’ Linda Douglass reports, “An aide to a Republican Senator tells ABC News his boss thought Frist blew it Tuesday when reacting to the Democratic shutdown of the Senate. The aide said by rushing to the microphones and blowing his top, he ‘turned a page A6 story into a front page story.'”
Douglass goes on to report hearing similar grumbling from other Republican aides. “They say that Frist’s actions elevated what would have otherwise been dismissed as a stunt. And they say it opened the door for Democrats to refocus attention on the Administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence.”
I think this is absolutely right. The closed session made for some entertaining political theater, but reporters started treating it as a major story once they saw Frist turn several shades of fury-induced purple. Reid & Co. wanted nothing more than to see this stunt generate attention … and Frist helped them out tremendously.
An astute commenter noted yesterday just how backwards the GOP strategy was.
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.
At a minimum, there’d be a lot less of a story. Instead, Frist pushed the whole thing onto the front page, giving the Dems the attention they needed on an issue that embarrasses the administration.
Thanks, Bill.