Posted on 02/22/2006 5:41:07 PM PST by quidnunc
Republicans, who usually have the good sense to avoid fratricide, are engaged in perhaps the most vicious intramural squabble of the Bush presidency over the deal allowing Dubai Ports World to control operations at several major U.S. seaports. The controversy ignited in an instant and has now involved virtually every prominent Republican in Washington and a bunch of Republican governors near the affected ports.
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Congressional leaders are feeling cranky and neglected. Bush is always doing stuff without telling them, and they're always grumbling he doesn't recognize that they're up for re-election this year. So, it probably feels very satisfying to push back at him for a change. And their opposition also seems like smart politics, at least superficially. …
Those political calculations may make sense for today, but in the long term, this fight will harm the GOP. Republicans can't distance themselves from Bush on security issues. He's not only the head of their party; he's the commander in chief. By pouncing on this issue so quickly and joining Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, Republican leaders send a global message: They don't trust Bush. They don't trust him enough to even wait to understand the facts of the deal. They don't trust him enough to even worry that they might have their facts wrong and wind up embarrassed.
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The squabble will also irritate the president. He's tired of congressional second-guessing—especially in a case like this where GOP leaders willfully refuse to acknowledge the complexity of global diplomacy and the value of global capitalism. You don't hear the deal's critics explaining who exactly will control port security if not Dubai Ports World. …
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(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
However you try to spin it, Tancredo has always fought to protect this country from freetraitors who would turn us into one big Nuevo Laredo for their own profit.
And that scares you. The tide is turning against you in the GOP and in the country at large.
"Read your Constitution, before you pretend to defend it. The Constitution says the President shall nominate, the Senate shall advise and consent...not Rush Limbaugh and Freepers."
Far be it from me to get into the middle of a furball, but it seems to me that the Constitution does, indeed, say that the President has the power to nominate, and the Senate has the power advise and consent.
It doesn't say that the President has to listen to the Senate's advice, but it also doesn't say that the Senate has to consent. Which means that the Constitution sets up a political dynamic, not a mechanical one. The President has no right to a rubber stamp. The Senate can say no. The Senate is elected, thanks to the Constitution. Therefore, Senators are subject to the public will and have to be concerned about the.
Nowhere does the Constitution tell Senators on what BASIS they have to advise or give consent. It only says that they have the power to do it.
So, if they fear their electorate, and decide not to consent based on that political calculation, they are perfectly within their power as written in the Constitution.
Being the President's buddy is enough, IF the Senate says so. If the Senate says no, then it's not. That's what the Constitution says, and that's how it works.
Miers was withdrawn by the President because he saw that the Senate was not going to consent. That's the system functioning as written.
I just want to repeat your freakish accusations against the freetratiors of the GOP. I await your further sophestry.
WTF. Does FR support impeachment against Dubya? Somedays I don't even recognize this forum. I know fiscal conservatives have been disappointed with the spending, but I thought most conservatives, and even some rats, wanted to survive. This guy has been a FReeper for almost a year and 1/2. He has made many friends.
No human will live up to the Reagan fantasy advertised here.
Gitmo, NSA, and the Patriot act are not new issues. Perhaps Regicide is retarded and thought we wouldn't notice how they were not related to our ports.
Thank you Regis for siding with the enemeies of America. It makes it so much easier to ignore your other opinions.
That is a indisputable argument. We will never know how the Senate would vote...in the past they have voted for poorly-qualified justices like Renquist and Warren...but Miers was not given a vote.
Limbaugh and Hannity get to decide today. Yeah!!!! for freedom and Yeah!!! for truth...I mean Fox News freedom and truth.
No.
"Being the President's buddy is enough, IF the Senate says so. If the Senate says no, then it's not. That's what the Constitution says, and that's how it works.
That is a indisputable argument. We will never know how the Senate would vote...in the past they have voted for poorly-qualified justices like Renquist and Warren...but Miers was not given a vote."
Miers had no right to a vote.
If you delve further into your Constitution, you'll find right there in Article I that the houses of Congress have the power to set their own internal rules.
So, the big picture is: the President can propose, and the Senate can advise, and can consent or reject. The way the Senate goes about doing those things is in accordance with the internal rules that the Senate sets up for itself, just like the Constitution said.
And that's what the Senate did. It followed its internal rules, and did nosecounting and politicking, and various Senators ADVISED the President that he DIDN'T have the votes.
We will never know what the final vote count would have been, because before it came to that, Ms. Miers (and not Limbaugh, and not Hannity) withdrew her name from consideration. And that ended that.
Of course, out in the wider democracy, Limbaugh and Hannity had the full freedom to campaign against Miers (if you have your Constitution handy, you will find their right to do that enumerated in Amendment 1). They brought to bear as much political pressure as they could against those elected Senators. So did a number of other people. And the net result was that the Senators ADVISED the President that he didn't have the votes.
Nowhere along the way did anything happen that was not eminently constitutional.
Of course, had things been pressed to a debate and a vote, it would have been very, very difficult for Republican Senators to speak too strongly against the President's choice, or to vote against her. That's why it was politically imperative to nip her candidacy in the bud before it came to commitment time by the Senators.
I didn't sign up to be Bush's lapdog, just because I voted for him twice.
Great! Stop being a lapdog and explain why you support rats and vote against Republicans....I'm still waiting for intelligent thought.
If not, I'd just as soon have a Democrat who has to pretend to care about national security than a turncoat Repbu who doesn't even try and pretend anymore.
Oh...so you're a rat. Thanx for admitting it. I hope you rot in hell for how you have let America descend. If my children should fall upon your gaze, I would instruct them to spit upon you. I believe you are the worst thing to happen to America since Kevin Costner pretended to be an American soldier.
You attack your own side and excuse the enemy. I wish you did not exist and I 'm ashamed your posts are archived by web sources that can't accurately gage your uselessness.
Interesting read - congress wrote process legislation - it was supposed to be SECRET:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1583784/posts
I am glad men of valor and morality like Kennedy, Schummer, and Keyes have stood in opposition to Miers. She might have viewed unborn fetuses in non-legalistic...or even human terms.
Several of the Pirates of the late 18th/early 19th century would qualify as "private companies" as would Al Qaeda.
Limbaugh is not an elected official. He's a talk radio host.
Your post is worthy of it's own thread. Not enough people have looked beyond the pundits kneejerks.
"It remains my opinion that the Catholic Latino influx improves the overall religiosity of America, and that the impending Catholic majority will be the key to overturning abortion."
I agree with you in part,that the Latino population in general is more religious than the white population,in general.
Many, if not most of the new Hispanic immigrants are not Roman Catholics, they are Pentecostals -Evangelical Protestants.
"I am glad men of valor and morality like Kennedy, Schummer, and Keyes have stood in opposition to Miers. She might have viewed unborn fetuses in non-legalistic...or even human terms."
She MIGHT have.
But then again, she might not have.
Many folks on the pro-life side did not have confidence in her candidacy because they were not comfortable with her past positions on things. It wasn't just the Kennedys and Schumers who opposed her.
Supreme Court openings come only once in a blue moon, and lots of people were not willing to take a gamble on a candidate who didn't look strong to THEM, regardless of Bush's support of her.
So, they exercised their political rights and opposed the candidacy, vociferously. And she decided that she didn't want to go through with it all.
Schumer voted for the war along with the Republicans. His initial support for the war does not deprive the war of legitimacy, just as his opposition to Miers does not render those Republicans who opposed her candidacy somehow equivalent.
"Limbaugh is not an elected official. He's a talk radio host."
Yep, and the First Amendment gives him plenary authority to scream his head off in public as loud as he can about his beliefs, and get as big a following as he can. If that following becomes so big that it menaces the political careers of Senators who defy it, that is precisely what Limbaugh sought to do, and precisely what the First Amendment gives him the right to do. We elect our representatives. Once they are in office, we have plenary rights to nag them, browbeat them and, if they head in a direction we don't like, to organize massive political resistance to them in such a way that they fear for their political lives and cave in to public demands.
That's what happened in the Miers case. It's the way our Republic works and always has worked. President nominates. Senate advises and consents or disapproves, and People bring as much pressure on Senate and President to do what People want. In this case, the pressure from the People, organized by folks like Limbaugh, added to doubts already in the minds of some Senators, and made the nomination very politically costly. So Miers withdrew in order to spare the President a humiliating defeat.
That is how the Constitution is designed to work.
The President doesn't always win, not if the Senate, or the People, don't like what he's doing.
They didn't with Miers, so he lost.
No big deal. Happens all the time. Looks like it's may happen again on this port deal.
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