Democrats Forced Senate Shutdown: The Political Winner And Loser

They say it’s wise to pick and choose your battles, and amid news reports suggesting that Democrats are increasingly hesitant to use the filibuster against conservative Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, Minority Leader Harry Reid gave the GOP a sucker punch that reminded everyone that a minority party can still pack a political wallop.

Seldom has a political leader pulled off such a well-timed and well-executed maneuver.

And seldom has any political leader looked as genuinely outraged — and utterly hapless — as Majority Leader Bill Frist, who may be a few hairs away from facing a rebellion in GOP ranks over his less-than-iron-fisted Senate leadership. (Why is Trent Lott smiling these days?)

In case you missed it, you can view the videos of the event here and Reid’s equally defiant and unapologetic-in-the-face-of-Republican-denunciations newsconference here.

If you were on Mars today and need a recap, here’s one from the BBC:

The US Democratic Party has forced the Senate into a closed session to debate intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The Democrats said they acted because Republicans was refusing to hold a full investigation into the government’s use of intelligence.

Republicans have described it as a political stunt.

The Republican leader, Bill Frist, said the Senate had been hijacked by the procedure, last used 25 years ago.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Harry Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session.

The public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed and television cameras were turned off, and the doors were closed.

No vote is required in such circumstances. Previous secret sessions to discuss classified material have always held by the agreement of the two parties.

But here’s the problem:

• Dr. Frist and GOPers who eagerly leaked threats to the press earlier this year about their willingness to trigger a “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster thus signaled an end to a longstanding “given” about the way the Senate worked. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if the filibuster was generally respected (if hated) as a tradition. They changed the rules of the game.

• Once the long-suffering Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, “Scooter” Libby’s indictment in the Plamegate CIA leak case sucked all the media coverage dry and became The Flavor Of The Day.
• Immediately after that, stories contained suggestions that Republicans were ready to use the “nuclear option” to ensure that the new conservative nominee Samuel Alito survived any Democratic filibuster attempt. ANOTHER threat saying in effect, “Hey you guys, the gloves are off and we’ll do whatever we can do because we have the power and YOU DON’T.”
• Some news reports over the weekend indicated the administration was going to try to regain control of the news coverage and retake the political initiative by making news about taxes, bird flu preventative measures etc — all legitimate. But here’s a PR question for the White House: Is it really wise to trumpet to reporters that these serious issues are at least partially STRATEGIC MOVES?
• Reid then gives HIS similar message to the GOP: “Hey, you guys, the gloves are off. There are rules about the way the Senate operates and we’re going to take advantage of them now, just as you’ve made it clear you’re going to use your power every way you possibly can, past Senate traditions to the contrary.”

What remains amazing about this whole event is the way Reid continues to emerge as a quiet but deadly strategist. He’s untelegenic, doesn’t talk much but, when he talks, it’s all in sound bites. Some political leaders are talk and self-glorification. He saves his words (even as he sometimes commits hideous foot-in-mouth disease) so that Americans of both parties (whether they like him or not) know that if he’s saying something it’s wise to be listening to it.

CORRECTED HYPERLINK: From MSNBC’s Tom Curry:

WASHINGTON – On a quiet Indian summer afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid dramatically wrenched the political agenda from the Republican majority Monday by forcing the Senate into secret session.

Reid’s gambit was designed to prod Republicans to agree to speed up “Phase II� of the investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, into how spy data was used or misused in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Senate Democrats said Roberts and the Republicans were stalling on the investigation; Republicans disputed that.

And Frist? Once again — as when Senate moderates thwarted the “nuclear option” — he was not a happy camper:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who sounded angrier than at any moment since he arrived in the Senate ten years ago, derided Reid’s move as “a political stunt.�

“Since I’ve been majority leader, I have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader, have I ever been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution,� Frist said.

“For the next year and a half I can’t trust Sen. Reid,� he added.

These were somewhat ironic words: Frist threw any gentlemen’s agreements to the winds during the last Presidential election when he went into then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s home state to campaign to defeat him.

The Financial Times looks at it this way:

The dramatic showdown, which took Republicans by surprise, marked a bitter partisan moment for members of the Senate intelligence committee, which has a tradition of strong bipartisan work.

Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the panel, said the White House had “sent down an edict� to Republicans to block the inquiry, and accused Republicans of being “willing to take orders� from the Bush administration.

Pat Roberts, the Republican vice-chairman of the panel, said his staff had been proceeding with the investigation. As the Senate returned to open session, he announced that the committee would begin hearings next Tuesday on the inquiry.

The LA Times:

Under Senate rules, Reid, on his own, could force the Senate into a rare closed session, which requires the sergeant at arms to clear the chamber of visitors.

Frist called Reid’s action an `an affront to me personally” and labeled it a political “stunt.” Defending the closed session, Reid’s top lieutenant, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, said, “It is clear now that the American people were not informed properly before the invasion of Iraq. Intelligence information was distorted, was misused, and we have seen as late as last week the lengths which this administration has gone to to try to silence and discredit their critics of the misuse of this intelligence information.”

So what do we have here? Even if this issue recedes (which it will), Reid has underscored lingering questions about the quality of intelligence on the war on Iraq plus the past and PRESENT credibility of the Bush administration.

Even if Bush & Co announce a zillion new initiatives, even if Alito sails through, unless there is a turn for the better versus a turn for the worse in the war, Reid has hammered home this concept using as his formidable tools the same kind of Senate rule power that Frist and the GOP are threatening to use to deep-six filibusters.

Perhaps more potent: Reid did this BY SURPRISE so it was a huge, dramatic mini-event — ensuring maximum live coverage on TV, providing peak-news-cycle chances for people on the left and right to sound off on radio and cable shows, and ensuring it’ll get HUGE play in the newspapers later today.

Predictably, Democrats are as elated over Reid’s quiet-but-deadly skill as a Senate leader as GOPers are elated over Samuel Alito’s credentials and conservative record. And, predictably, Republicans are denouncing Reid and the Senate Democrats as obstructionists at best and a bunch of sour-grapes losers at worst.

But that isn’t unanimous. Some Republicans are pointing to Reid as a formidable leader of the opposition.

John Podhoretz, writing in National Review Online, believes Democrats have been on the defensive since the Plamegate indictment wasn’t as huge as they expected and because Alito has become such a popular choice among Republicans. But he admits some admiration for his skills and dismay over Frist’s lack of them:

I think the Democratic move today in the Senate is politically canny….So by pulling this unprecedented maneuver with Section 21, they’re staging a counter assault against the president’s effort to change the political story of the moment.

This is the sort of thing to make the Huffington Puffington people shriek with happiness and the Kossians to chortle with joy — almost as much as Bush pulling Miers’s nomination did for us (I know, we’re not supposed to gloat, but come on). And unfortunately, what the GOP has to respond to the maneuver is Bill Frist, who’s a great and noble human being but a stinko political leader. It may not work, but there’s no sense pretending this is a dumb thing to do. It isn’t.

UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge writes:

So does anyone agree with me that Harry Ried’s stunt today likely was at least as much about sending a warning shot re the nuclear (a.k.a. constitutional) option as WMDs? A signal that he can tie up the Senate in retaliation for elimination of the judicial nomination filibuster? Of course, as a fan of limited government, I suspect the world would be a better place if the Senate was routinely tied up in knots. Or, as Howard Baker once suggested, deprived of air conditioning.

And, aside from the pivotal issue of forcing Republicans to provide more answers on potentially embarrassing questions on war intelligence, what is the most fascinating aspect of all this?

It’s the fact that Reid, unlike Frist, is clearly not a politico who is aiming for higher office. He looks like he just woke up from a nap on TV, he’s not in an age group appealing to youthful demographics, and he has just recovered from a stroke.

Frist holds his finger to the wind; Harry just gives ‘em the finger….

UPDATE: Here are three roundups on this issue (due to logistics this may not be able be to be updated until much later today):
–Outside The Beltway
–Michelle Malkin
–UNCoRRELATED