Comments on: Iraq: Can the Democrats Use Their Hammer?

By: Elrod

Elrod — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 06:11:33 +0000

Jason,
That goes both ways, doesn’t it? Does Fox News think Reid should pull the nuclear option to get this resolution through?

But I think in this case it’s irrelevant. We’re talking about a symbolic resolution, that’s it. The Washington Post rightly pointed that the real story is that 56 Senators came out against the escalation, not that the Dems couldn’t get cloture.

By: carpeicthus

carpeicthus — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 05:44:00 +0000

I think it’s good for the Senate to have the options to passing hasty legislation harder is a good thing, no matter which party is doing it. So the only things wrong with the GOP doing this is on the merits of the case, not the principles â€¦ and there’s nothing at stake here. But of course these are the same people who argued last year that these sort of techniques were just short of treason.

By: Jason Steck

Jason Steck — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 03:26:06 +0000

Paul, don’t you find it odd that the same media that used to present Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees as bravely standing up for principle now presents a Republican filibuster of an artificially limited Iraq war debate as obstructionism?

I wish they would make up their minds and settle on talking points that were consistent about whether or not it is good for the minority to have/use procedural protections. As it is, it usually seems that the good/bad decision about the use of the filibuster correlates exactly to Democrat/Republican use.

By: Paul Silver

Paul Silver — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 02:57:14 +0000

I think the Senate GOP position to insist that they be able to propose amendments and alternatives is legitimate. However I do believe that they will lose the public relations battle with most citizen’s who see them as obstructing the will of the people. The GOP seems committed to losing large in 08.
They should cut their loses and vote on the Warner/Levin compromise.

By: CaliBlogger

CaliBlogger — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 21:05:45 +0000

Perhaps Dems will “wimp out”, the ability to predict the behavior of 400+ congresscritters being beyond my ability.

And despite the crocodile tears being shed on the right for the Dems likely refusal to defund the war outright (a move they recognize would be politically unpopular), I suspect the Dems will continue to move towards hindering the escalation as well as use Congress’ investigatory powers to continue to expose the futility of Bush’s war efforts.

My best guess is that rather than defunding the war outright the house will attach conditions to the upcoming supplemental which will restrict the admin’s ability to escalate a la the Murtha proposal.