Best of the Web Today - May 25, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Dems United?
Much of the conservative commentary about Monday's filibuster deal has been along the lines of this Thomas Sowell column:
The Senate Democrats hung tough and the Republicans wimped out. The Republicans had the votes but they didn't have the guts.
That is the bottom line on the compromise agreement that will allow votes to proceed on judicial nominees without a filibuster, except in "extraordinary" cases. In other words, the Democrats will filibuster only when they feel like filibustering, since they will define what "extraordinary" means to them.
This seems a rather obvious misreading of what happened, doesn't it? True, seven Republicans broke from their party in agreeing to abjure the "nuclear option," but seven Democrats also broke from theirs to allow votes on at least three nominees whom fellow Dems had spent years smearing as "extremist" and "out of the mainstream." And since the Senate has fewer Democrats than Republicans, the Democrats are actually the more divided party: 15.6% of Dems joined the compromise, vs. just 12.7% of Republicans.
What's more, at least three of the compromising Republicans--Mike DeWine, Lindsey Graham and John Warner--have publicly expressed a willingness to "go nuclear" should the Democrats act in bad faith in filibustering a nominee.
To our mind, though, the biggest misconception in Sowell's analysis is the assumption that the Democrats filibuster because "they feel like filibustering." The Dems' use of the filibuster was political, not recreational--a strategy that was at least plausible when they adopted it, but that proved disastrous.
The Democrats didn't begin using the filibuster right away when President Bush took office; they didn't need to. In 2001-02, after Jim Jeffords switched parties, the Democrats held a majority and were able to stop judges via party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee. The Republicans' two-seat net gain in the 2002 election gave the GOP the majority, whereupon the Democrats began employing the filibuster in 2003-04. In doing so, they showed an impressive unity. For once they actually seemed like an organized political party.
But the filibuster strategy was based on political assumptions that turned out to be faulty. In 2003-04, Senate Democrats thought they were running out the clock on a one-term president. Their plan for the 109th Congress was for Majority Leader Tom Daschle to shepherd through President Kerry's judicial nominees.
Instead, President Bush won re-election, and the Republicans won eight of nine contested Senate races. John Kerry* is still a senator, and Tom Daschle isn't. And the only Democrat to win a close Senate race, Ken Salazar of Colorado, said during his campaign that he opposed the judicial filibuster. Not surprisingly, Salazar was one of the seven compromising Democrats.
Did the Democrats really want to go through all this again? Well, some no doubt did. Hate is more important than success to the likes of Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy, and in any case senators from liberal states are unlikely to pay a price for obstructionism. But the filibuster strategy runs counter to the inclinations and political interests of a substantial minority of Democrats, including, as we noted yesterday, at least five of the seven compromisers.
From where we sit, then, the actions of the Republican compromisers look like not a capitulation but a way of letting Democrats back down from a losing position without being humiliated.
Why not humiliate the Democrats? Well, here's one reason: "Democrats agreed on Tuesday to clear the way for the Senate to vote on the controversial nomination of John Bolton as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, which was expected to pass mainly on party lines," Reuters reports. Had the Senate gone nuclear yesterday, Bolton's nomination would be suffering from the fallout.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way promised 115 days ago to release his military records.
Arizona Dreaming
The Christian Science Monitor analyzes what the filibuster deal means for the 2008 presidential race, and comes up with some far-fetched conclusions:
Among those who appear to be actively considering a run, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona emerges a winner, analysts say. Senator McCain played a significant role in crafting the compromise announced Monday evening by a bipartisan group of 14 senators. And he is no stranger to the spotlight--or the public. In the 2000 presidential race, he nearly knocked off heir-apparent George W. Bush for the GOP nomination.
The agreement on judges "certainly burnished his credentials as an independent thinker and someone who's a problem-solver," says John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.
McCain's biggest drawback is that his shoot-from-the-hip style makes him unpopular with religious conservatives. But he opposes abortion, and could become palatable to that GOP bloc if he appeared the strongest Republican to face the Democratic nominee, analysts say.
The trouble is, in 2000 McCain did well only in states that allow non-Republicans to vote in Republican primaries. There is no way to win the GOP nomination without appealing to Republicans. The filibuster deal may be forgotten by 2008, but for now, rightly or wrongly, it has the Republican base disgruntled.
It's telling that another "maverick" who'd been seen as a possible vote against the nuclear option not only wasn't among the seven compromising Republicans but put out a statement Monday night denouncing the deal. "This is not a good compromise and I do not support it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, who probably did his own presidential hopes a modest service thereby.
86 Senators Hate America!
A Boston Globe editorial endorsing the filibuster compromise begins: "Fourteen senators proved late Monday that they love their country and their institution more than they love the ideological extremists who increasingly drive the national debate."
Now, we've also written favorably of the deal. But how dare the Boston Globe question the patriotism of the 86 senators who weren't a part of it?
A Toast to the Shiites
"Ahmad," a London-based expat Iraqi blogger, picks up an Arabic-language report from Baghdad:
[The] Ministry of Interior in Iraq abolished Saddam's alcohol, night clubs and casinos restriction law which was introduced in the 90's. The law has been abolished because it interferes with and limits Iraqis personal freedom. Businesses, however, are required to obtain a licence from Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Health.
Remember all the doomsayers who were predicting an Iranian-style Shiite theocracy if the Iraqis were allowed to vote. It's amazing how these people get things so consistently wrong.
Best Wishes for a Speedy Death
Great news, if true, in this Washington Post report from Baghdad:
Insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most-wanted man in Iraq, was shot and wounded in a weekend ambush by U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to one of his lieutenants and a statement attributed to his organization, al Qaeda in Iraq. . . .
The Zarqawi lieutenant, who identified himself as Abu Karrar, said in an interview Tuesday that Zarqawi's aides were helping him choose someone to lead the group if he died.
Abu Karrar and fighters in Zarqawi's group said the insurgent leader had been shot between his shoulder and his chest during fighting Saturday and Sunday around the western city of Ramadi. A top Zarqawi aide and several Arab fighters were killed in the clash, Abu Karrar said.
The U.S. military said it had no immediate confirmation that Zarqawi had been wounded or that such a fight had occurred. Some Iraqis and Americans said they suspected the reports were a ruse, either to boost Zarqawi's popularity or to trick his pursuers.
If it's an effort to boost his popularity, it may not be working: "We are very happy to hear that Zarqawi is wounded, and by the will of God we will hear the news of his death at the hands of the Iraqi army," the Post quotes a spokesman for Ayatollah Mohammad Saeed Hakim as saying. To which we can only say inshallah.
Just Give Me That Old Time Derision
As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean has been casting about for a way of appealing to traditionalist Christian voters. The results are cringe-inducing, as was most recently clear in Dean's "Meet the Press" appearance with Tim Russert Sunday. Russert asked Dean about a fund-raising appearance at which he mocked Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction:
Russert: Is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who has gone into therapy and the abuse for drug addiction?
Dean: . . . The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction. That's a medical problem. And I respect those who clearly, in my profession, who are trying to overcome their problems.
The problem is it is galling to Democrats, 48 percent of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don't think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people--I think the Bible says something to the effect that be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven't removed the mote from your own eye. And I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves. . . . We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.
Russert: But should you jump in the fray and be mocking those kind of people?
Dean: I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy. I'm not going to be lectured as a Democrat--we've got some pretty strong moral values in my party, and maybe we ought to do a better job standing up and fighting for them. Our moral values, in contradiction to the Republicans', is we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.
So in the blink of an eye Dean's message changes from "Can't we all get along?" to "You people want to starve children." Maybe a politician with Bill Clinton's skill could get away with being so brazen, but when Dean does it, it's either appalling or funny, depending on whether you take him seriously. Dean also had this to say about his own religious beliefs:
I don't go to church all that much. I consider myself a deeply religious person. I consider myself a Christian. And I don't--you know, some of the other Christians would dare to say that I'm not a Christian. Frankly, it's what gets my ire up. We get back to the Rush Limbaugh stuff. I am sick of being told what I and what I'm not by other people. I'll tell you what I am. I'm a committed Christian. And the fact of whether I go to church or not, people can say whether I should or shouldn't, I worship in my own way. It came out in the campaign that I pray every night. That's my business. That's not the business of the pharisees who are going to preach to me about what I do and then do something else.
Dean's efforts to appeal to conservative Christian voters evince a cultural tone-deafness that is somewhat reminiscent of Republicans' efforts to reach out to black voters. And it turns out Dean's efforts to reach out to black voters evince a cultural tone-deafness that is somewhat reminiscent of Republicans' efforts to reach out to black voters. As the Associated Press reports:
Black voters are upset with the Democratic Party for coming around just weeks before elections seeking their votes, party chairman Howard Dean said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Taking black voters for granted is a long-standing problem for the party that dates to the 1960s, said Dean, who promised changes in strategy even as he cited diversity at the top of the Democratic National Committee.
"African-Americans are annoyed with the Democratic Party because we ask them for their votes four weeks before the election instead of being in the community now and that's a mistake I'm trying to fix," he said. "There's a new generation of African-American leaders and a new generation of African-Americans. We can't go out and say could you vote for us because we were so helpful during the civil rights era."
Dean actually is on to something here--Democrats have gotten an awful lot of mileage out of the civil rights triumphs of 40 years ago, and that may not last forever. But is there a more effective way of annoying African-Americans than making them listen to Howard Dean?
What's Nebraska Doing That He Doesn't Like?
"Karzai to Make Nebraska Stop"--headline, Associated Press, May 25
This Just In
"Caffeinated Cola May Make Kids Hyperactive"--headline, WebMD.com, May 23
No Kidding
"San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city," the Associated Press reports. "Just 14.5 percent of the city's population is 18 and under." The AP dispatch attributes the small number of children to high housing costs and Frisco's high prevalence of nonprocreative sexual orientations. Not mentioned is the Roe effect. The AP also describes how the city is responding:
Determined to change things, Mayor Gavin Newsom has put the kid crisis near the top of his agenda, appointing a 27-member policy council to develop plans for keeping families in the city. . . .
Newsom has expanded health insurance for the poor to cover more people under 25, and created a tax credit for working families. And voters have approved measures to patch up San Francisco's public schools, which have seen enrollment drop from about 62,000 to 59,000 since 2000.
One voter initiative approved up to $60 million annually to restore public school arts, physical education and other extras that state spending no longer covers. Another expanded the city's Children's Fund, guaranteeing about $30 million a year for after-school activities, child care subsidies and other programs.
So the lack of children is a reason to spend more taxpayer money on schools and other programs for kids. If there were more kids, would that be a reason to spend less? The question answers itself, doesn't it? As Ronald Reagan once observed, "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth." |
