{"id":4232,"date":"2005-05-18T12:51:17","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T16:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4232.html"},"modified":"2005-05-18T12:51:17","modified_gmt":"2005-05-18T16:51:17","slug":"frist-goes-wildly-off-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/frist-goes-wildly-off-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Frist goes wildly off-message"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t already seen the Think Progress post<\/a> about Bill Frist’s off-message arguments on the Senate floor this morning, it’s worth checking out.<\/p>\n

Chuck Schumer: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?<\/p>\n

Frist: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination — we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe — a point — and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.<\/b> (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, that’s the wrong argument. First, Frist is implicitly acknowledging that he supported a judicial filibuster in March 2000, which he did<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Second, Frist is underminig his own arguments and the raison d’etre for this entire fight. The whole reason the nuclear option is necessary, Frist insists, is that judicial filibusters are “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.” Today, when the fight is finally underway and you’d expect Frist to be on top of his game, he’s making a new, weaker argument: that the filibusters are legal and have been used in the past, but have been used too much. No wonder this guy’s losing.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested, the debate is being aired live. If you’re not near a TV, there’s always C-SPAN online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t already seen the Think Progress post about Bill Frist’s off-message arguments on the Senate floor this morning, it’s worth checking out. Chuck Schumer: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez? Frist: The president, the um, in response, uh, […]<\/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-4232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4232","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=4232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}