As you’ve probably heard, the Senate is poised to consider a non-binding resolution this afternoon, in which the chamber will tell the president it has lost confidence in Alberto Gonzales’ ability to serve as Attorney General. In response, Senate Republicans are expected to present reasonable arguments in defense of Gonzales’ tenure and evidence of the AG’s impressive accomplishments during his tenure.
Nah, I’m just kidding. Senate Republicans are actually planning a couple of fairly pathetic stunts. Roll Call reported that the GOP leadership is weighing an alternative resolution that would attack Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in order to, as Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) put it, give Schumer “a dose of his own medicine.” (via Nico)
One Senate Republican source explained that such a resolution would not name Schumer directly, but instead instruct the Senate to vote on whether a Senator who runs a campaign committee should be “using his political capacity to run the show” on an investigation such as the U.S. attorneys scandal. Schumer is the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“My sense is, we’re going to let them get cloture, and we’re going to talk about it,” the source said. “We have more dirt to throw at them than they have at us.”
First, I guarantee Dems have more dirt on the GOP. Second, attacking Schumer over this is as silly now as it was three months ago when the Republicans clung to it in desperation. It was debunked then, several times, and hasn’t gotten better with age.
But wait, it gets worse.
In addition to a bizarre attack on Schumer, even though he’s not even the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate GOP is also considering another resolution from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would attack, well, everyone.
Enter Coburn with an amendment to the Gonzales no-confidence resolution, which is the legislative equivalent of something I would expect to see in my son’s fourth-grade class.
In the face of his fellow Senators pushing to express a lack of confidence in George W. Bush’s boy, Gonzales, Coburn says “Oh yeah, well I’m going to express no confidence in you.”
Coburn’s amendment to S.J. Res. 14 gives a laundry list of 19 items, intended to demonstrate wasteful spending and a lack of fiscal responsibility on the part of the Congress and ends with this:
“No Confidence.–It is the sense of the Senate that Congress neither has the will nor the desire to cut frivolous, excessive, or wasteful spending and therefore the American people should have no confidence in the ability of Congress or its members to balance the budget or protect the long term financial solvency of Social Security, Medicare, or the Nation itself.”
In other words, what passes for clever in the Senate GOP is, “Nuh uh. You are.”
There are times I can’t help but look at the Senate Republican caucus with pity. These guys are just embarrassing themselves. Have they no pride?