I have my doubts as to whether or not vulnerable Republicans like Gordon Smith (R-OR) who've voted in favor of S-CHIP expansion are genuinely upset about the president's veto threats, but it does put the GOP's unprecedentedly frequent filibustering of 2007 into interesting perspective. Oftentimes a congressional minority will seek to use the filibuster to spare a president the need to veto a popular bill. But Bush is an unpopular lame duck, and he doesn't even have a Gore-esque successor figure inside the administration, so there's really no reason the Republicans couldn't let a lot of this stuff go through congress and then get vetoed.
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Veto
21 Sep 2007 08:58 am
Comments (7)
Bush is an unpopular lame duck, and he doesn't even have a Gore-esque successor figure inside the administration, so there's really no reason the Republicans couldn't let a lot of this stuff go through congress and then get vetoed.
I have to think it's a GOP electoral strategy for '08 grounded in the assumption that they will lose the Presidency. The only way to retain some share of power is to retake Congress, and the way they've decided to do that is to portray the current Democratic Congress as completely ineffectual -- a portrayal facilitated by blocking all the majority's legislation while relying on the media to tell a tale of Dem weakeness rather than unprecedented GOP obstructionism.
In other words, all these filibusters are not about protecting the President -- they're about retaking Congress. Remember -- the merits and popularity of particular policies are secondary to them. It's all about taking scalps.
The GOP wanted to do away with the filibuster and the Dems said "no".
Your basic B'rer Rabbit and the Briar Patch moment. (What makes Democratic elected officials dopes and/or spineless dweebs? Please, be specific.)
Message to the Washington Post: You shouldn't call it "60 votes needed for passage" when it's Democrats and filibuster when it's Republicans. It should be called the same.
The GOP wanted to do away with the filibuster and the Dems said "no".
Not really, Jeffrey (unless you're thinking of a different episode than I am). The Republicans wanted to declare that the filibuster for judicial nominations was unconstitutional, through an ad hoc maneuver that transparently broke the Senate's rules. If the Democrats had let them do it, it wouldn't have been binding on any future filibusters by the GOP.
BTW, there's a case or two where the WaPo does use "filibuster" for GOP filibusters, but the discrepancy is striking. This is a particularly ridiculous example -- it's like they're playing Taboo and "filibuster" is one of the words they can't say.
"so there's really no reason the Republicans couldn't let a lot of this stuff go through congress and then get vetoed."
Except, of course, that with Bush's record, any Republican would have to be mad to be confident that Bush would veto any given bad bill.
If the Democrats had let them do it, it wouldn't have been binding on any future filibusters by the GOP.
It would have been a transparent case of trying to get a "kings x-no take back". Once the precedent was there, the filibuster rule could have been deep sixed at the opportune time.
Comments closed October 05, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I don't know what you're talking about. There are no Republican filibusters. As of January, "60 votes needed for passage" is the new rule.
Even "the liberal Washington Post" says so.
Searching the washingtonpost.com domain for "filibuster":
http://tinyurl.com/34rnlg
and for "60 votes needed for passage":
http://tinyurl.com/2kmfpa
All "filibusters" are by Democrats. All "60 votes needed for passage" stories are Republicans holding up bills.
(from an Atrios story that I couldn't believe until I replicated it)
Posted by Njorl | September 21, 2007 9:18 AM