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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter O'Brien who wrote (8850)	5/24/2001 10:34:08 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Here is another way to look at it! Capitol Hill Cross-Dressers John L. Perry May 22, 2001 Time to play let's pretend: One or more ersatz Republicans jump ship, handing Democrats control of the Senate. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. The latest blather within the Washington Beltway has as many as three Republican seats in the Senate dropping out of the GOP column this year. That's in addition to a possible loss of another Republican seat in the 2002 election, when a third of the membership is up for re-election. And atop all that, there's John McCain of Arizona doing more damage below the water line to his Republican Party than any number of card-carrying Democrats in the Senate already split 50-50, by party registration if not by allegiance. The ruminations go something like this: • Jim Jeffords, the Republican in name only from Vermont, has already been helping Democrats chain sea anchors to President Bush's programs in the Senate. The Democratic leadership has flattered him with offers of this or that plum Senate committee chairmanship. Now he is purported to be the first suiting up to slip over the side. Even if Jeffords leaves the GOP to become an Independent – which is how the guessing goes – that suits Democrats just fine. And it doesn't cost them a chairmanship. Independent or not, the result that counts would still be loss of nominal GOP control of the Senate: 50 Democrats plus one Independent to 49 Republicans. Meet the new Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Republican ex-Majority Leader Trent Lott trots off to the showers. • Lincoln Chafee's Republican loyalty is more miniscule than his home state of Rhode Island. He and Jeffords are GOP poster twins for political infidelity. If Chafee goes Independent along with Jeffords, the score becomes 50 plus 2 to 48. More room for Daschle to do his dance on Republicans' heads. • South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, born Dec. 5, 1902, once wrestled to the floor of a Senate hallway a robust colleague, Warren G. Magnuson of Washington state, then three years his junior, now a dozen years deceased. No longer exactly at the top of his form, Thurmond is not looked upon as a sure bet to seek election in 2002 for the ninth time to the Senate. There is some thought that his health in advanced age – two years short of a century – may remove him from office this year. South Carolina's Gov. Jim Hodges, a Democrat, would presumably not name a Republican to fill a Thurmond vacancy. Score: 51 plus 2 to 47, and Majority Leader Daschle carves another notch in his belt. • Things sound a little grim for Republican Bob Smith of New Hampshire, whose term is up in the 2002 election. If he's replaced by a Democrat, then the score goes to 52 plus 2 to 46. Life gets easier and easier for Tom Daschle. Not necessarily. Bitter irony might very well turn to sweet serendipity for George W. Bush. Here's how that thinking goes: • The way it is now – 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans and Vice President Dick Cheney hanging by like a fireman atop a polished brass pole to cast tie-breaker votes – Bush and the Republican Party really don't control the Senate. Every move they make there is a craps-shot. • At the end of every day, the president must be exhausted from trying to recruit a moderate Democrat here or coax a lily-livered Republican there to give him that razor-thin margin he needs to pass a bill in some recognizable form. • True, Bush will have a tax cut, but even it will be well pock-marked by centrist senators who are the ones actually in control of the upper chamber. • On a topic so close to his and the first lady's hearts – education – the bill that will come out of Congress is a clumsy counterfeit, not worth the paper it's printed on. • Bush is far enough along into his presidency that he will be credited or tarred with whatever the economy does from now on – and he has increasingly less control over making things go the way he wants. • Bush has become a sitting duck for whatever Democrats and turncoat Republicans in the Senate set him up to endure. • Being president in a topsy-turvey world like that is to be a guaranteed loser. Turn that around. Suddenly the breaks start going Bush's way: • If Daschle and Republicrats get in perceived control of the Senate, whatever "bad" happens is a dead rat Bush and loyal Republicans can plop down on the new majority party's door mat. • Let Daschle fall flat on his face trying to salvage California from its self-inflicted energy pickle, for which there is no known short-run antidote. • In every field, Bush becomes free to propose serious, long-term legislation, without fretting over whether Democrats and members of his own party would turn up their noses. • If they refuse to pass his major initiatives, he can say to the electorate: "It's a do-nothing Democratic Congress." Worked for Harry Truman when he used it on Republicans. • If Democrats push atrocious legislation through Congress, Bush can veto it and, regardless of whether that veto is overridden, make political capital for saving the country from irresponsible government in Washington. • It puts Bush, not Democrats, in position to set the agenda for the 2002 and 2004 elections. And it leaves Democrats in charge of "the mess in Washington." The bottom line: As it is now, Bush cannot get his programs through a hog-tied Senate – yet he's stuck for the blame, for being "inept" or "not smart enough to govern." Both are lies, but that's how he will be made to appear with each successive failure on Capitol Hill. The president needs to get out of that no-win box. Losing control of the Senate to Tom Daschle and his merry band of leftists could turn out to be win-lose for Democrats and lose-win for Bush. What better way to go into the 2002 and 2004 elections? By then maybe the American electorate will have had enough of political cross-dressing on Capitol Hill.