{"id":3788,"date":"2005-03-22T09:31:24","date_gmt":"2005-03-22T14:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3788.html"},"modified":"2005-03-22T09:31:24","modified_gmt":"2005-03-22T14:31:24","slug":"guess-who-else-was-prepared-to-shut-down-the-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/guess-who-else-was-prepared-to-shut-down-the-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Guess who else was prepared to shut down the Senate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In recent weeks, as talk of the &#8220;nuclear option&#8221; has shifted from speculation to imminent floor fight, conservatives have wielded a double-edged kvetch: they&#8217;re irate about Dems blocking the least qualified of Bush&#8217;s judicial nominees, and they&#8217;re almost as incensed about how Dems would retaliate if Republicans gutted the Senate&#8217;s filibuster rules.<\/p>\n<p>A week ago, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid made it clear to Bill Frist and the GOP: go nuclear and the Senate <a href=\"http:\/\/democrats.senate.gov\/~dpc\/press\/05\/2005315B18.html\">will come to a screeching halt<\/a>. As Reid put it, Senate Dems &#8220;would never block legislation vital to our troops or other national security interests, and we will help ensure that critical government services continue to function for the American people,&#8221; but that&#8217;s about it.<\/p>\n<p>The right responded with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.family.org\/cforum\/fnif\/news\/a0035903.cfm\">predictable bluster<\/a>. The very idea that a lawmaker would recommend shutting down Senate business unless he got his way was too outrageous for conservatives to tolerate. As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A38361-2005Mar15.html\">Frist put it<\/a>, &#8220;To shut down the Senate would be irresponsible and partisan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, how many conservatives are ready to condemn <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2005\/ALLPOLITICS\/03\/22\/schiavo.politics.ap\/\">Rick &#8220;Man on Dog&#8221; Santorum<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, a prominent abortion foe who faces a difficult re-election race in 2006 and also holds presidential ambitions, also injected himself into the [Terri Schiavo] issue.<\/p>\n<p>He told fellow GOP leaders last week <b>he was prepared to hold up passage of any legislation if necessary, including the budget<\/b>, to force action on a bill to give federal courts jurisdiction in Schiavo&#8217;s case. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Reid threatens to bring the Senate to a halt? Outrage. Santorum threatens to bring the Senate to a halt? Silence.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, Santorum didn&#8217;t have to follow through on his threat because the Senate was anxious to intervene in the Schiavo case. But it&#8217;s interesting that Santorum was prepared to shut down the Senate to get his way and conservatives seem to think such a tactic would have been perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In recent weeks, as talk of the &#8220;nuclear option&#8221; has shifted from speculation to imminent floor fight, conservatives have wielded a double-edged kvetch: they&#8217;re irate about Dems blocking the least qualified of Bush&#8217;s judicial nominees, and they&#8217;re almost as incensed about how Dems would retaliate if Republicans gutted the Senate&#8217;s filibuster rules. A week ago, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}