Frist Said to Have 'Nuclear Option' Votes

NewsMax ^ | 5/22/05 | Carl Limbacher

[InterceptPoint]

I stand by my prediction.

If Reid doesn't have the votes to win on the nuclear option then the Dems will supply the votes necessary to get to the 60 needed for cloture, tuck their tails between their legs, stall the Senate in several minor ways, piss and moan, but in the end regroup to fight this battle on another day when they might be able to muster the one or two additional votes they need to beat Frist.

There will be no vote on the nuclear option. Neither side really wants and it won't be needed. For McPain and the other RINOs, their cover will be lost and they will have to go on record and vote up or down for a bunch of Bush nominees that are way too conservative for them. That is what all this deal making has been about. They don't want to go on the record one way or the other. They don't want to vote yes because they don't like the nominees. They don't want to vote no because it would hurt them with the party base. Much easier to just let the Dems kill the nominations. But it's not going to turn out that way. Frist will win.

It seems that Rush or one of his staff is a Free Republic lurker. Rush made the same point I did (above) on Monday's show and predicted that the Dems will vote for cloture rather than face a defeat via the nuclear option. We should all know tomorrow. Get out the popcorn

[strategofr]

"How? Some GOP will take the failure to execute the nuclear option as a GOP failure."

Yes, this is how I see it. I thought I detected fear in Jim Quinn's voice this morning, though his statements are strong. The idea of this line of thinking itself is something I picked up here in FR and have seen nowhere else (wish I remembered the freeper who I got it from).

An email I sent around in the "Stop Specter" campaign illustrates the problem with the idea that the French army the Germans defeated was a different one than the one they would have fought if the French attacked Germany during the invasion of Poland.


http://groups.msn.com/2004CampaignNotes/_whatsnew.msnw


On November 7, Robert Novak wrote that Arlen Specter “…could be denied that post [the Judiciary Committee Chair] by a vote of his Republican colleagues, and several said he will be asked to commit himself to support Bush’s judicial nominees.” The implied plan is to get a loyalty commitment from Specter and then, on the strength of that commitment, elevate him to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair.

The mistake the Republican Senators contemplate here is similar to the one made by Britain and France in their decision to appease Hitler at Munich in 1938. There, Britain and France effectively gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler in return for his “ironclad guarantee” not to invade Poland. Hitler was threatened with war if he broke the agreement.

How do the lessons of Munich apply to the possibility of Specter attaining the Judiciary Chair? Before making an agreement with a man, ask two questions: What are his stated intentions and what is his track record on agreements? One of Hitler’s prominent stated intentions was German domination of the world, as laid out in his book, Mien Kempf. One of Specter’s prominent stated intentions is to prevent strict constructionists from being appointed to the Supreme Court, as laid out in his book, The Passion for Truth. In this regard, Specter’s book proudly recalls his lead role in blocking the Supreme Court confirmation of Robert Bork, who was nominated by President Reagan.

In terms of his previous attitude toward agreements, Hitler had repeatedly violated the Versailles treaty by occupying the Rhineland, rebuilding the German Army, etc. As the “Pittsburgh Post Gazette” (a Liberal newspaper that endorsed Specter in the recent election) pointed out on November 6, “Senator Specter has a bad habit of making different promises to different people and playing them off one another. Thus, after all his recent statements claiming he would support President Bush’s judges, it should come as no surprise that he specifically promised a newspaper’s [the Post Gazette’s] editorial board that he would, in fact block Bush’s conservative and pro-life Supreme Court justices to gain their [the Post Gazette’s] endorsement!”

Having given his word to both sides, Specter has to betray one of them. In his last term, he is trying to achieve a legacy (please the Democrats), not act with political expediency (please the Republicans). Specter’s deeply held, oft expressed conviction is that strict constructionists like Robert Bork are wrong. Specter’s goal is to block such nominees from confirmation to the Supreme Court. Once elevated to the Judiciary Committee Chair, Specter will be helped by the Democratic Senate minority, the convoluted Senate rules of procedure, and a barrage of friendly artillery cover from the media. Combining the power of the Judiciary Chair with the benefit of four terms of practice in ruthless Senate operations, Snarlin’ Arlen will achieve his goal.

A final lesson from the Anglo-French confrontation of Hitler is connected to another idea being discussed: that if the Senators make Specter the Judiciary Chair and he blocks Bush’s appointments, they will later remove him. This is where the French and British inability to take action during the German 1939 invasion of Poland is so instructive. To marshal sufficient forces to quickly conquer Poland, the Germans had to turn their back on the French army and leave their Western Front virtually undefended.

The French army was nearly 100 percent mobilized at the moment of the German attack and had as many troops and tanks as the entire German army, and the French tanks in 1939 were at least as good as those of the Germans (The Unfought Battle, Jon Kimke, Stein and Day Publishers, 1968, p. 88-9, 139). “After months of fearful speculation and intelligence, the French and British allies were at last face to face with the German reality [on the eve of the attack on Poland]. But the ‘psychological block’ to which Churchill had referred was still at work.” (Kimke, p. 89).

While France and Britain did immediately declare war on Germany as soon as Poland was attacked, they took no immediate military action. As Kimke points out (and as Hitler well understood then) even a French attack unsupported by Britain at that time would have almost certainly led to a swift victory over Germany. This would have prevented World War II (Kimke, p. 138). “General Ulrich Liss, the able German officer who had to make a special study of the French forces before and after the outbreak of the war, has rightly warned against judging the fighting capacity of the French soldier of 1939 by what happened in [the French collapse of] the summer of 1940, after Poland had been overrun and after a demoralizing year spent in inexplicable inactivity in the trenches and the fortifications of the Maginot Line (Kimke, p. 139).” Once you’ve appeased an enemy, it is difficult to spring into effective and timely action later.

In the wake of President Bush’s election mandate, the Democratic Party, the Media and allied forces are as weak, in as much disarray and as distracted by their own infighting as they will be for a long time (just as Germany was most vulnerable during the invasion of Poland in 1939). Whatever makes the Senators afraid to act decisively now will only get worse. In addition, removing a sitting chairperson is harder than preventing a person from assuming the chair. If the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee choose not to act now, they will be unable to act later.

Disclaimer: I am not in any way accusing Arlen Specter of Nazism or anything like that. That would be heinous and also ridiculous. Arlen Specter is Jewish, which would make such a charge especially repugnant. In fact, I am Jewish myself. But all this is quite beside the point of this essay. The point being that the situation faced by the Senate Judiciary Committee today is closely analogous to the situations faced by the French and British when they tried (and failed) to deal with Hitler in 1938 (at Munich) and in 1939 (during the invasion of Poland). In fact, the numerous historical analogies correlate so well that we would ignore them at our peril, if we hope to see Bush successfully nominate non-activist, strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.

[Sun]

57% of Americans in Rasmussen poll say that "Senate rules should be changed so that a vote must be taken on every person the President nominates to become a judge." That's unchanged from two weeks ago.

Maybe we ought to tell our U.S. senators about this poll, and also tell those "swing" senators.


http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/Judicial%20Nominations--May%2014.htm


Rush Limbaugh said that senators are wavering back and forth, partly because of pressure from the public. Let's get more phone calls and/or e-mails than the other side does.

Even if none of these WAVERING senators is your own senator,
please call 'em, anyway.

The last I heard the undecided GOP Senators are Collins (ME), DeWine (OH), and Warner (VA). Frist can afford to lose only two, because McCain, Chafee, and Snowe have declined to end the judicial filibusters.

We can call toll-free at 877-762-8762 .


E-mail info can be found here (but phone calls are more effective):
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm

Urge each to FULLY SUPPORT THE FILIBUSTERING
RULES CHANGE and NO COMPROMISES.

[Sun]

I think Brooks is a Republican, though.

[strategofr]

"The Turks, who put being Muslim first, betrayed us by not letting the 4th Infantry Division, the "digital" division because of its high tech equipment swoop down from the North."

Whew! Thanks much for the kind words.

One point on the Turks. That may have been set up by our good friends in the State Department (do we pay their pensions, or does Putin?)

From a very knowlegeable poster on Strategy Page (elcid, connected to US gov't intelligence somehow) I got that the Turks bailed because of lack of UN support. If we put the 4th there based on the assumption there would be UN approval then that was the point the blunder was made.

However, I did not have the connection to Kurds and how outcome could have been more positive that way (thanks for that).

If there is a better book on the State Department, please let me know:
Dangerous Diplomacy, How the State Department Undermines America's Security, by Joel Mowbray, 2003

[Sun]

Here's my rough draft e-mail to the sell-outs. Looking for constructive criticism.

Dear Senator _________:

Democrats all over the internet are gloating, because of the compromise, rather than the expected Constitutional option vote.

Many Republicans voters don't want to contribute to the Republican Party any more.

Please don't make the same mistake in June when Judge William Rehnquist resigns (probably) and the Constitutional option debate comes up again, because the Dems will most likely filibuster President Bush's Supreme Court nominee.

57% of Americans in Rasmussen poll say that "Senate rules should be changed so that a vote must be taken on every person the President nominates to become a judge." That's unchanged from two weeks ago.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/Judicial%20Nominations--May%2014.htm

Sincerely,

[strategofr]

"Am I correct in assuming you were in the Digital Division? You are my hero!"

Sorry to disappoint. I was never in the service.

The website is www.strategypage.com

I also have struggled along with Lidell Hart. I have found the best overall book on war to be The Art of Maneuver, Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle, by Robert Leonhard (1991).

Another absolutely amazing book is Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, by Robert Coram, (2002). Boyd was beyond belief. He essentially created the F-16. One of his "acolytes" created the A-10. But Boyd kept going past air warfare. His general concept of war eventually transformed the Marine Corps, gave birth to manouver warfare.

It appears that he and Dick Cheney came up with the famous "left hook" strategy used in Gulf War I.