Sunday Discussion Group

July 22, 2007

This week’s Senate drama, including an attention-getting all-night debate on Iraq, certainly ratcheted up the pressure on Republican lawmakers to possibly grow some backbone and take a stand in opposition to the president’s failed policies. I say “possibly,” of course,” because it obviously hasn’t happened yet.

When the Reed-Levin amendment came to the floor, the GOP, as expected, refused to allow an up-or-down vote on the measure (knowing they’d lose). When it came time to vote on ending the Republican filibuster, only four GOP senators — Hagel, Smith, Snowe, and Collins — said they wanted to see Reed-Levin get a fair shake. It wasn’t even close.

What’s worse, Collins later said she didn’t necessarily support the policy itself, but simply voted to end the filibuster, not for Reed-Levin. Indeed, Collins sounded very much like the typical Republican ally of the Bush White House when she said she has “grave reservations” that “an abrupt withdrawal” could produce “dire consequences.”

To be sure, the good news is the GOP is divided and unsure of themselves…

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly nervous defending the war in Iraq, and Democrats more confident in their attempts to end it.

More than a year before the 2008 elections, it is a political role reversal that bodes ill for President Bush’s war strategy, not to mention his recent statement that Congress’ role should merely be “funding the troops.”

…but the bad news is they still appear unwilling to match their votes with their rhetoric.

Today’s discussion group topic is: Will Republican lawmakers ever come around? How much more failure are they willing to endorse before changing course?

A couple of days ago, Greg Sargent came up with a description for those Republican senators who express deep, heartfelt reservations about the president’s Iraq policy, only to vote against every possible measure intended to change that policy: WINOs — Waverers in Name Only. It’s a surprisingly large caucus including Sens. Lugar, Warner, Domenici, Alexander, and Voinovich.

Harold Meyerson had a hard-hitting column the other day, calling the group “spineless specimens,” who “don’t actually want to act on their perception” about the war.

It’s a discomforting reality, but Dems can’t win the fight without their help. Dems need 60 votes to break a filibuster, and right now they have 49 Dems and maybe four Republicans. Even if they pick up eight more Republicans, enough to allow a vote on a withdrawal measure, Bush will veto, meaning that Dems will need a total of 17 Republican votes in the Senate for an override.

The winds have shifted and Dems appear to have some momentum. The conventional wisdom suggests that Republicans, eventually, will have to give in to the policy and political realities and join the Dems. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who reportedly tells people that he believes Bush “f—ed up” the war, told CNN this week that Republicans are this close to speaking out against the president’s policy. “I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

But here’s the catch: no one’s ever lost money betting on Republicans to do the wrong thing. Dems have had two Republican allies on Iraq policy (Hagel and Smith), and last week they picked up a third (Snowe). They need seven more to start passing bills, and 14 more to start overriding vetoes.

Is it ever going to happen? Or is the nation really stuck waiting until 2009?

It’s an old pun, but the Publicans are stuck between Iraq and a hard place. If they vote to “stay the course” they will get voted out of office. If they turn away from Bush, the Publican base will call them flip-floppers and vote them out of office.

But Washington politics is so polarized that I think that most Publicans would walk the plank rather than vote with the Democrats, even when they know that the Democrats are right. Like CB said, nobody ever lost money betting that the Publicans will do the wrong thing.

So I think that we’re stuck waiting until 2009. The only way that the Democrats can end the war is by not funding it. And that doesn’t require 60 votes.

  • Congressional Impotence is legendary. The only trouble with this particular bout is that the GOP and its corporate media lackeys seem very skilled at making Congressional Impotence appear to be due to Democratic Importence or, worse, Democratic Deviltry.

    Whether it’s the GOP’s skill at shifting the blame or the General Public’s Impotence due to TeeVee brain-addling, the fact remains that Our Leaders have allowed this mess to be hung around the Demcorats’ necks. Fortunately, whatever’s really behind it, this is politics, not Sunday School or beanbag, and Our Leaders deserve nothing but scorn for the way they let keep letting this happen.

    The GOP minority has been able to get whatever they want. Why can’t we, as a majority, do that?

  • Even if the Dems could get enough votes to beat the filibuster and get even to defeat the veto, Bush would still passively aggressively keep the war going. We’re stuck until he’s gone. Bush is a lame-killer-duck.

  • typos: Maybe that “Importence” typo in #2 was a subconscious desire for “importance” but it should have been typed “iimpotence”. And “Fortunately” should have been “Unfortunately”. Hey, it’s early here on the Left Coast.

  • We will see things start to change as November, 2008 gets closer. Republicans in danger of losing their seats will speak out and begin to vote against Bush. And another 1,000+ of our kids will be dead. Shame!

  • Or is the nation really stuck waiting until 2009?

    The Democrats won the 2006 Congressional elections and what happened? Rumsfeld got fired.

    When November of 2008 rolls around, a “shitload” of congressional Republicans will get fired and the country will elect a Democratic president.

    Yes, the Iraq debacle / tragedy will not end soon enough.

  • Congressional Republicans are in a genuine bind. Aside from any desire/pressure to support Bush for party reasons, they have to deal with Republican voters who still support the war. Doing so, however, costs them with independents, who poll much closer to Democrats than to Republicans.

    At the end of his July 16 article, The GOP is the party of the Iraq war, Glen Greenwald cited some interesting numbers from a June CBS Poll:

    • Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the job Bush is doing (66-23%)
    • They even overwhelmingly support the way Bush is handling Iraq (59-33%)
    • There is a huge gap between Republicans who think the surge is working and those who think it is not working (42-5%, with 41% believing it has had no impact)
    • And the vast majority of Republicans favors either keeping the current troop levels in Iraq or increasing troops levels (60-32%)

    Will Republican lawmakers ever come around? My guess is no, not until Republican voters come around — and for that, I wouldn’t recommend holding one’s breath.

  • Will Republican lawmakers ever come around? How much more failure are they willing to endorse before changing course?

    I’ll play along for fun. The ReThugs will come around when their constituencies force the issue and vote them out of office — so the answer is 2009. However, the Dems need to go ahead and force Dear Leader’s hand and not send him his ransom this time around. He already has blood on his hands from this mercenary quest for oil and Dick’s Private Empire, let him own it fully.

    But, it’s a moot point, like Dale said. We have open tyranny in this country. It’s an oligarchy run by King George and the Dick-tator. Impeachment is the only option available to preserve the Constitution.

    You will find me conveniently located in Washington, D.C. if Georgie boy doesn’t give up the keys to the kingdom peaceably on January, 20, 2009.

  • This week has served only to strengthen my conviction that our little tin-pot is going to dissolve congress as obstructionist, declare Martial Law, and “postpone” 2008. It’s been done before, with grandpappy Bush holding the purse strings.

    Not saying it’ll work – it’s a statistical impossibility to “control” a population this large and this diverse – nor that the attempt would necessarily be a bad thing. America as we have known her is over, we need to see beyond the windshield. Such an act would serve to regionalize the continent into something much closer to the confederation of independent republics the Founders originally envisioned. In the long run…

    Ain’t nothin’ east of The Rockies, or south of the Alvord, we need.

  • About the only thing to take us out of this sorry mess of Iraq (one small mess for the delusional WH, and one giant mess for the rest of the world let alone the families of our good men and women in uniform) is for the Senate Republicans to step up and SHOW SOME dEMOCRATIC COURAGE TO CROSS THE AISLE AND VOTE WITH THEIR OPPOSITION. The Republican Senators who do such an act of political courage will retain their seats in ’08, ’10 and ’12. Their reelections will be the result of their contsituents seeing that they earnestly put their nation above the misguided foreign policy of this WH. To help defeat the circle-the-wagons obstructionistas in the Senate we should organize immediately and begin posting early and often the statements of Republican Senators and law-makers who seemingly can’t do the right thing for America.

    Let all future Senate and House elections begin now – make a list of the diehard obstructionistas, and put the political screws to them. Set up blogs that merely track the madness. Invite Republicans to “go on the record” as to what their priorities are for our nation, and then when they can’t satisfy our desire to turn the Iraq misfortune around, vote the Rascals Out! -Kevo

  • I’m not sure which is more true: that the Republican machine has the power to crush the wills of their party members and mandate that they put party before country at all times or if Republicans are simply emasculated followers who want to join a “daddy” party that will make their lives easy and always tell them what to do in every situatiuon.

    Regardless, the defintion of a Republican is someone socially and morally impotent who is simply unable to bring themselves to do the right thing and go against their group mentality. The last Republican with a spine was Jim Jeffords, and he has since left the party.

    We can’t count on any Republicans to do the right thing for the greater good of all the citizens of this nation. Our only remaining hope is that they do the right thing simply because their instinct for self-preservation will force them to do the right thing so that they can remain in office. It’s a morally callous way for the Republicans to operate and will waste time, lives and money, but that’s what we’re reduced to with the party of complete and utter selfishness.

  • The truth of the matter is that we need 67 votes in the senate to accomplish anything by an affirmative vote. Does anyone think rounding up those votes is possible? The other option which Kagro X discussed yesterday is to not approve funding for the Pentagon. This skirts the veto problem, but, as he points out, the Pentagon may still be able to fund the war.Barring some unforeseen circumstance or brilliant procedural move, we are stuck in Iraq until 2009.

    The withdrawal is unlikely to be pretty and Republicans will try to pin that ugliness on the Democratic president who will oversee it. The one thing that Democrats must do now is make sure that the electorate knows that this is a Republican failure and all future problems associated with Iraq are Republican problems. This must be repeated ,and repeated ,and repeated until everyone knows it in their gut that it is true.

  • Here’s a bumper sticker to get things started. All it takes is a piece of contact paper cut to the desired shape with the following for all to see:

    Republicans = Obstructionistas
    Stop the Occupation

  • The key to this in my view is not in the Senate – it’s in the House, where the Budget will be determined.

    Come Oct. 1, whether either chamber has managed to bring Cheney to heel, the purse strings can, and should, tighten. Earmark funding for withdrawal and force protection instead of a blank check.

  • We’re still waiting for the thirty names from Jeane Palfrey’s phone list. That might set the Smithers among the pigeons before 2009.

  • The Maine Sunday Telegram had a story today headlined “Collins’ views a tough fit in polarizing war debate”.

    One graph surprised me, because I thought her support was falling off: “The pressure on Collins is greater than on some of her Republican colleagues because she’s running for re-election in a state where an April poll found that just 22 percent of residents support the president’s handling of the war. Still, the same poll also held more reassuring news for Collins: She held a 57 percent to 32 percent advantage over her Democratic challenger [Tom Allen].”

    No editorial comments, though. I’m waiting to see how they come down on things.

    Am headed to Maine this week, and the visit will include time with a couple (the woman is a life-long friend) who are enthusiastically among the 22%). I’m planning to talk about the weather, the Red Sox, and the zucchini crop, anything but politics–otherwise I’m going to need a lot of medication.

  • Politics is the beast that will not be tamed.

    Money, in the absence of humanity, runs the world – and, in turn, politics.

    We saw, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a world mostly reacting through their humanity as they mostly banded with the United States against terrorism – ready to stand en masse against this brutality.

    The world, at that point in time, was posed to transcend its customary position of being mired in the muck of self-serving rationalization. The hope, at that moment was measurable.

    It didn’t take long for the powers-that-be, the same old unimaginative old guard to squander or systematically eliminate the opportunity for the world to seize upon a brave new paradigm for fear of overthrowing the status quo and hurting those who normally benefit from how things are.

    This incredible lack of true visionary courage and lack of imagination and humanity was simply another in a long long line of similar choices by those we rely on for leadership. Perhaps that’s our true folly.

    As a combat veteran who was drafted out of college and into the Viet Nam debacle, I’ve seen first hand the heartbreakingly disastrous results of mendacious, self-serving, partisan (with the goal of power and not true governing) politics.

    Often, the priviledged are out of touch with the realities that most people live under. Generally, those in political power have absolutely no way of understanding what it’s like to be in an untenable position in a combat zone.

    I hear politicians, over and over again, use the troops to further their own or their party’s political positions. It is the rare exception that politicians demonstrate a true and understanding concern for those (including soldiers) they affect.

    Back in 1970 my reaction to living in the “real” world of power and money and how politics affect us was to drop out of law school, study art and generally to let the world fry themselves in their manic desires for some sort of ill-conceived edge over others as I go about my life trying to create the world I would hope for for myself and those close to me.

    After recently getting politically involved again after seeing this current administration’s dangerous actions toward our constitution and the world in gemeral, I’m again struck with the political game playing and posturing going on as people are in dire danger. This isn’t a game. This is real in way too many people’s lives.

    Hearing many of our politicians, one could think that no one is dying, that lives and families are not being destroyed, that people’s hearts and souls and bodies are not in turmoil.

    It seems that perhaps little has changed.

    The inevitable conclusion to my observations is that we will have to wait until 2009 for something significant to happen to the United States involvement in Iraq.

    My cynical self says that even after 2009 we will still be there because of theoil, money, and power that is part of this scenario.

    My hopeful self says that something will change – that someone will come along with the charisma to capture the imigination and hearts of people to the extent that a critical mass will rise and demand a new way.

    After just seeing David Brooks again talk about all of this in terms of political strategy and abstract notions of unattachment, my heart is drifting away from this “non-human” arena and again toward a more human world of trying to create a life around me that I would hope for everyone.

    Please forgive any typos or misspelling – I”m being called away and have no time to edit.

  • Collins is fireproof in Maine, I’m afraid — and I say that as an Allen donor, Democratic county committee member and convention delegate.

    The first problem is Collins’ reputation as an ‘independent’. The state has a fatal weakness for ‘independents’ (Angus King, e.g. Perot beat Bush père in 1992 here) and Collins has got the reputation of being ‘independent’.

    The Gannett papers — now owned by the estate-tax fixated Blethens out of Seattle — were instrumental in creating the legend that Collins is somehow ‘independent’. It fits in with a local myth that we’re better than politics, and suits their purposes.

    The other problem is gender.

    No Democrat can win anywhere in Maine, even in the first District, or in most places, , any time, without a majority of women, and Collins — because of a few cosmetic votes and the halo effect from Snowe — has that sewn up for the indefinite future, as far as I can see.

    I work in a public school (NCLB, anyone) with a 70% union membership, also 65% female, that laughs openly at Bush references at faculty meetings, and I get shouted down at lunch when I suggest Susie Creamcheese is part of the problem.

    Collins was visited upon us by Democratic women crossing party lines — plus a little help from the Greens, in the form of Rensenbrink — in 1996, and its going to save her this time, too.

    It’ll be close, but Allen will lose by 7,500-12,000 votes. His
    House seat is a lock, though, so there’s no net loss.

  • Republicans in Congress have to decide what it will take to survive. They should get behind impeachment because if they continue to try to obstruct the will of the American people, they will get voted out i.e. they will have NO BASE for support in 2008 – by then 90% of the people will demand withdrawl and only 20% of the Repubs will support Bush. If they push Bush out now, they will survive in 2008. The BS they are pulling right now is not sustainable till 2008.

  • I believe the Republicans told those up for reelection to vote with the Democrats because the repubs already had the votes necessary to block the amendment coming up for a vote. I do not believe the Republicans in the Senate suddenly developed a conscious. They have vowed to prevent “any” substantial legislation coming out of a Democratically controlled congress to pass. No matter what it is, just to demean the Democrats in the Senate.
    This means they don’t care about governing only about power and control. They do not have the nation’s best interests in mind only party interests. Which means they don’t care about America, only a republican nation. Only the constituents of their states can wag the finger at them now raising the question, Is there any integrity left in the Republican Party?

    btw—Collins is about as much of an Independent as Joe Lieberman. She only disagrees when it is safe to do so or when she has been told to do so by her republican handlers.

  • (OT somewhat, but I was struck by ej’s comment)

    ej @ 17 describes a personal dilemma that I think is common to many of us. A few years younger than ej, I did not serve in Vietnam but in the 70’s became similarly disillusioned with politics, turning my attention to spiritual matters, the visual arts and a smaller sphere wherein I thought I stood a better chance of making a difference.

    Some years later, having become a father, I came to realize that I owed my daughter’s generation something more, and became active locally, particularly with regard to education. The election of 2000 made it clear there were larger issues at play that would affect the the world she would inherit, and everything since has confirmed that impression, only to a degree I could never have imagined.

    Like ej, I struggle with a reality-based cynicism on one hand and a fervent hope that something will change. Primarily for our daughter’s sake, but also for my own, I’ve tried to balance the two. Much of what we discuss here and elsewhere on the Net I’ve turned into teaching opportunities (yesterday’s post on the “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” led to a particularly lively discussion) in the hope that she’s able to maintain a sense of hope amid the reality she’s about to encounter as she goes off to start college in three weeks. Hopefully, my civic involvement will one day help her realize that it’s her turn to stand up for something she believes in, because I can think of few things sadder than a young person without hope.

    As for 2009, I harbor no delusions that even a Democratic sweep would restore our representative democracy, but for now, I’ll side with the Dems as our only hope to halt the progress of darker forces from the right. If Dems are successful in 08, we’ll have a new set of issues to deal with. And should that come to pass, I hope blogs such as this continue to hold those in power to account and help us move closer to the ideas upon which this nation was founded.

  • I suspect quite a few of them will come around as Nov ’08 nears. But I doubt any of them will come around until after their primaries.
    For now they have to convince their constituents that they’re loyal republican foot soldiers. After the primaries, they’ll have to do the exact opposite.
    Even with the early primary dates, it still might not be enough time to pull off a convincing 180 degree turn.

  • Well, the Army now says – according to an article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times – that it won’t really be until November that they will be able to give a solid report about the situation in Iraq, that the September Report is really too soon to tell.

    Does anyone here want to bet the Republicans in the Senate will start echoing that, around September 1?

    These people are further proof that my great-grand-uncle and lifelong Democratic politician (an advisor to Harry Truman) had it right when he told me long ago, “The only ‘good Republicans’ are pushing up daisies.”

    The only thing to expect of them is that they’ll continue being the morons they have been since their first breath.

  • what commentators and politicians haven’t yet factored in is what i’d like to call the “harry potter factor” (no spoilers here). i’m only 12 chapters into the new book, but it’s very clear that what occurs in wizard world, even if rowling had it all plotted out from the start, draws directly on what bush is doing in our real world. the metaphor is unmistakable and easily grasped. 12 million copies of this book have been printed for the u.s. market alone. it will be bigger than the da vinci code within a month. and that will start to shape american’s perception of republicans and their administration.

  • We need more political “stunts” from Harry and Nancy to force the Republican Congress to keep standing up for Bush, and make the Republican magin the the House and Senate a political issue.
    With 67 Democratic Senators, our votes can not be blocked

  • I think the Repubs are waiting for “A Miracle in Iraq” to happen. My guess is that, if it doesn’t happen by Thanksgiving (I agree, they’ll use every bit of spin they can think of, to blow off the September reports, unless they’re in their favour), they’ll go home for Christmas and get an earful from their constituents. And will start voting “towards November ’08” around January.

    Which would be OK, if it weren’t for all the dead who’ll pile up between now and then and between then and whenever we finally do manage to pull the shattered remnants of our army out of the Iraq hell-hole.

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