Shenanigans on the detainee bill?
I'm finding it hard to believe that the current Republican spat over the detainee bill is real.
If you look back at the McCain torture amendment (which turned out to be toothless because of a signing statement,) the same three Senators were extremely active on more or less exactly the same ground, and now I'm expected to believe that the White House staked its entire "national security" election strategy on this bill without vetting it through those three first? Without even sounding them out?
Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight, but that just doesn't sound right.
One argument might be that the White House was trying to use the force of the election to jam through their critical immunity clauses, except that none of these three is up for election. Were they trying to pressure Dems to agree to this bill or maybe remake Bush as the compromiser?
If the entire plan was to have the bill fail to blame the Dems for "making America less safe" then why are these three Senators so far and so publicly out in front? Maybe it's a ploy to eventually assuage these three and then paint the Dems as extremist, but then Colin Powell and the generals and the military jump in.
Is the whole thing designed to show Congressional independence? Then where are the Senators/House members who need that for their election?
So, is this real or an elaborate Kabuki being conducted by McCain, Warner, Graham, and the White House? I would suspect Kabuki, but right now I don't see a clear positive Republican end game. Is Osama going to show up? Are we going to avert nuclear disaster only because of the torturer in chief? Is there enough time to engineer a "failure" because of the stalled bill?
I just don't get it.
If you look back at the McCain torture amendment (which turned out to be toothless because of a signing statement,) the same three Senators were extremely active on more or less exactly the same ground, and now I'm expected to believe that the White House staked its entire "national security" election strategy on this bill without vetting it through those three first? Without even sounding them out?
Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight, but that just doesn't sound right.
One argument might be that the White House was trying to use the force of the election to jam through their critical immunity clauses, except that none of these three is up for election. Were they trying to pressure Dems to agree to this bill or maybe remake Bush as the compromiser?
If the entire plan was to have the bill fail to blame the Dems for "making America less safe" then why are these three Senators so far and so publicly out in front? Maybe it's a ploy to eventually assuage these three and then paint the Dems as extremist, but then Colin Powell and the generals and the military jump in.
Is the whole thing designed to show Congressional independence? Then where are the Senators/House members who need that for their election?
So, is this real or an elaborate Kabuki being conducted by McCain, Warner, Graham, and the White House? I would suspect Kabuki, but right now I don't see a clear positive Republican end game. Is Osama going to show up? Are we going to avert nuclear disaster only because of the torturer in chief? Is there enough time to engineer a "failure" because of the stalled bill?
I just don't get it.
posted by mikevotes at
9:21 PM
4 Comments:
I think the fight was real. WH arrogance led them to think everybody on their side of the aisle would go along with what they wanted in an election year. After all, these people have all put party above principle before, so why not again?
But Warner, McCain, and Graham have been signaling their opposition to the admin proposals for awhile now and if the WH was so hubristic (remember Miers? remember Dubai?), they would have realized the battle they were looking to set up (Strong Republicans vs. Weak Dems) wasn't going to work so well when the leading critics were four Republicans.
I just can't see any win for the GOP on this. Sure, it could give some GOPers cover by saying they don't vote in lockstep w/ the WH, but as you say, these four aren't up for re-election, so what was the point? Also, Rove wants to win every news cycle between now and November according to Richard Wolffe of Newsweek and yesterday's committee vote amounted to a loss - all night long that story led on the news.
The bottom line is: the WH miscalculated that election year politics would overcome any GOP dissent.
By
Reality-Based Educator, at 6:35 AM
Good point about Miers and Dubai Ports.
But, since this is the big election issue, how do you let this happen?
In my tinfoil hat, I'm favoring one of two possibilities.
1) That because of the need for immunity, they proposed it now because even though there would be a fight, it would be less. If they put it up in the lame duck, there's no "election guilt," and they can't risk putting it up after the loss.
2) That a "compromise" will be found with these three and then the Dems are "irrational."
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 7:15 AM
You could be right, mike, but the story has dominated two news cycles for them and not in a good way.
MCain/Powell/Warner/Graham have the backing of 51% of the public in the latest WSJ/NBC poll, which also has the Wolfs and the Tweetys saying Georgie might be losing this fight.
Somebody did say that the upside for the WH is that at least Iraq is out of the news while Wolf, Tweety and the rest are screaming about the MPWG vs. WH/RNC battle. Maybe that's the upside for them? Do anything to keep Iraq out of the news?
By
Reality-Based Educator, at 3:47 PM
That's what I'm starting to think tonight. If this does resolve, it will be better than if it never happened.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 5:14 PM
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