Posted on 05/26/2005 9:03:32 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The deal to avert a change in Senate cloture rules is more than just a temporary outbreak of sanity in this highly charged partisan accelerator chamber. It amounts to a transfer of leadership from the polarized, party leaders to the narrow but critical center of the institution.
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) still has the corner office, and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still has the key to the executive washroom, but it is the 14 senators who crafted this deal who now are the people to see in the Senate. Few realized that when the Republicans garnered 55 seats in the elections of 2004 it did not represent a gain toward achieving cloture as much as it set the stage for a transfer of leadership.
Now it takes just as many renegades from the left to break a filibuster as it does from the right to pass a bill. This parity is conferring tremendous power on the moderates. Although there are very few of them, these centrists can now stand to achieve a great deal of power.
Whatever their motives, let's celebrate the fact that there now exists, in effect, a third-party caucus in the Senate of moderates from both parties. They may offer a chance for us to be rid of the reflexive and revolting partisanship that has led to government shutdowns and presidential impeachments, each equally abhorrent to most voters.
We can only hope that this new middle of the Senate will take the agenda away from the extremes in each party and bring government back to the middle, where it belongs.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
barf !
Moderate my @ss. "Centrist" is the new code word for "demolish Bush". NO ONE in the cabal has the interests of the country at heart. It's all about liberalism, cloaked as "centrist". A means to an end, no more.
Whew. I was waiting for Morris to praise this thing.
Now I'm certain it's just a bunch of cotton candy and daydreaming.
I wish Dick would get into stockpicking. I'd know what not to buy.
That's giving these numbskulls a few more protons, electrons, and neutrons than they are entitled to. No need to go to quarks...
No, but it doesn't necessarily have to. They will use their leverage to blackmail the leadership on bills they really want to use to garner support for their particular pet projects. This is why Frist needs to bring to bear the full power of the leadership on the 7 Republican traitors. He and Sen. McConnell (whose job as Majority Whip is to keep these traitors in line) need to have a nice little sit down with Senator Cochran, the chair of Appropriations and explain to them that no piece of pork legislation (or better yet, any appropriation excluding defense)originating from the office of any one of these 7 Senators will be buried in committee until these 7 publicaly repudiate the compromise. And perhaps make a phone call over to their House counterparts and make sure that it doesn't find it's way into the matching House bill either. Once that's done, the hold will be lifted....but it will be immediate reimposed should they deviate from party line votes on important legislation and amendments to bills. These men only understand it when you take away their votes or their pork. We can take away our votes and our cash contributions. It is within the Leadership's position to deny them their pork. The Majority Leader needs to use some of the perks and privileges of that position to advance the party's agenda....or he needs to return to his nice quiet surgery practice to make room for someone who can. If McCain had that position, do you think for a moment he wouldn't be strong-arming people using every bit of power he could gather?
Six of them anyways.
Make it permanent with Chafee. He makes Jeffords look like Rush Limbaugh.
bump
This was written and released before Thursday's Senate action, which throws his whole concept under the bus.
looks like dick got a bad case of toejam.
They may offer a chance for us to be rid of the reflexive and revolting partisanship that has led to government shutdowns and presidential impeachments, each equally abhorrent to most voters.
Government shutdowns are abhorrent to most voters? Government shutdowns are equal in abhorency to presidential impeachments? Dick, you're taking yourself way too seriously.
[...and Arizona's John McCain are the usual suspects when one comes up with a list of sane moderates.]
Yes, we must all thank Senator McCain.
Thank you so much, John.
Thank you for sabotaging more meaningful tax cuts.
Thank you for trying to kill responsible social security reform.
Thank you for publicly ripping our war plans in Iraq and Afghanistan for the terrorists to use against us.
Thank you for being the architect and prime mover of the CFR act that makes it a crime for citizens to run advertisements critical of politicians before an election.
But especially, thank you for ruining the opportunity we had to get strict constructionist judges installed in the federal courts while making the "activist judiciary" Democrats look foolish at the same time.
I'd like to thank you, Senator John McCain by saying:
"**** *** right up the *** with a porcupine on a stick!"
And, if you flip somebody the middle toe, how come its not considered vulgar and offensive ?
This is the kind of thing that happens when the President is silent for the most part, and does not push for what he wants forcefully. Remember how fast the Republicans ran from Pat Buchanan when he was running in the primaries as one? They called him a anti-Semite and worse. McCain, Voinovich, Snowe etc don't even rate a whimper from the highest levels of the party. Reagans commandment only is in play, if the guy doing the pushing in this party is on the left, those on the right are attacked as extreme or vigilante.
Char
And thus begins the decline of principled conservatism: you don't get your pork unless you ignore your principles.
Well done.
The Republicans would have been further ahead to let them filibuster and then use the 'obstructionist Democrats' ploy that worked so well with the removal of Daschle.
I don't think they wanted to use the 'nuclear option', because it would be seen as a power-grab. They took enough of a beating over the Schiavo intervention. The only way for them to prevent filibustering is to work on taking the supermajority of seats in the senate.
It's a power grab; at least the toe sucker got that part right. You got the rest of it right.
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