I was reading RedState this morning for one of my other gigs<\/a>, and noticed some reluctant praise<\/a> for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). “I’m not a Bill Frist fan,” streiff said. “[But as] the clock winds down on his tenure in the Senate Bill Frist has finally taken decisive action on a vital issue.”<\/p>\n And what is the vital issue that has finally prompted Frist to step up? Take a wild guess<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senate Majority Leader Bill [tag]Frist[\/tag] signaled yesterday that he and other White House allies will filibuster a bill dealing with the interrogation and prosecution of detainees if they cannot persuade a rival group of Republicans to rewrite key provisions opposed by President Bush. Frist’s chief of staff, Eric M. Ueland, called the dissidents’ bill “dead.”<\/p>\n The sharp rhetoric of last week was replaced yesterday by softer language from both the Bush administration and the three Republican senators leading the opposition to its proposals: [tag]Warner[\/tag], John [tag]McCain[\/tag] (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. [tag]Graham[\/tag] (S.C.). But Frist struck a more jarring tone, telling reporters that the trio’s bill is unacceptable despite its majority support.<\/p>\n For a bill to pass, Frist said, “it’s got to preserve our intelligence programs,” including the CIA’s aggressive interrogation techniques, and it must “protect classified information from terrorists.” He said that “the president’s bill achieves those two goals” but that “the Warner-McCain-Graham bill falls short.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, the Republican Senate Majority Leader is willing to filibuster a Republican-led interrogation bill sponsored by the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As Salon’s Tim Grieve put it<\/a>, “If GOP infighting over the treatment of detainees is a diversionary drama meant to keep all the bad news from Iraq off the front page…Republicans in the Senate are going to pretty extraordinary lengths to play their roles.” After all sorts of unspeakable bills have passed the Senate under his leadership, here is where Bill Frist is finally going draw the line: he will not allow limitations on the administration’s ability to [tag]torture[\/tag] people, or to violate treaties our country has solemnly sworn to abide by.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As for the legislation itself, what’s the prognosis? I’ve read all the various reports, and it’s practically impossible to grasp whether the “negotiations” are working or not. The Boston Globe<\/a> seems to hint at progress between Bush and the Warner\/McCain\/Graham trio; the Washington Post<\/a> hints at the opposite; and the NYT<\/a> doesn’t hint at anything because it just doesn’t know.<\/p>\n Looking purely at the numbers, the Warner\/McCain\/Graham approach has the votes to pass but can’t get past Frist. [tag]Bush[\/tag]’s approach has the leadership’s support, but, at least for now, lacks the votes.<\/p>\n I realize there’s a reasonable case to be made that all of this is kabuki theater, intended to drive Iraq news from the front page, but I’m skeptical — Republicans appear lost and confused right now, and frankly, I don’t think they’re good enough actors to pull it off if this wasn’t genuine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was reading RedState this morning for one of my other gigs, and noticed some reluctant praise for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). “I’m not a Bill Frist fan,” streiff said. “[But as] the clock winds down on his tenure in the Senate Bill Frist has finally taken decisive action on a vital issue.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8514","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=8514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAs for Frist, this is quite a way to end his not-so-illustrious career in the Senate. As hilzoy put it<\/a>:<\/p>\n