You’ve heard of the week that was? This week will be the week that’s it. Under one scenario, it could be a week that ends with a political furor being battled out in court. Or will it?
It’s the week when one of the most embarrassing and prickly political dramas facing Congressional Democrats will come to a head when the replacement candidate to serve out the remaining time on President Elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat who was shoved down Congress’ and the incoming President’s throats by a Governor alleged to have put Obama’s seat up for sale will hit the political and media fans. Will this unwelcome replacement candidate wind up shredded, out the door, with a lawyer in court — or sitting in his Senate seat?
No one is accusing Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s handpicked appointment of Roland “We are the Senator” Burris of himself being corrupt. But since the Governor with the hair and the four-letter words comedians love was caught on tape — and Democrats at all levels insisted any appointment he named would be “tainted” — the stage is set for an ugly drama pitting Burris and Gov. Blag on one side against Obama and Congressional Democrats on the other.
The latest: Burris is suggesting he has not ruled out going to court if they try to unseat him.
The man who embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich named to fill a vacant Senate seat says he hopes legal details regarding his controversial appointment are worked out soon.
Roland Burris told WLS-TV in Chicago on Sunday that he isn’t ruling out going to court to press his case for claiming the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
Burris maintains he has nothing to do with the corruption investigation surrounding Blagojevich.
Blagojevich has denied wrongdoing.
Senate Democratic leaders say they’ll reject any appointee named by Blagojevich but Burris says he still plans to go to Washington on Monday to claim the seat.
And, smack in the middle of it, the race card is now being played. It’s an argument to which most independent voters, the news media, Democrats and Republicans would reply in the Gov’s words: “YT&!@NU**@@! that charge!”
So the stage is set for a turbulent week that’ll test Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ political skills. Will Burris be seated in the end — and be, in effect, a two year persona non grata? Or, given the fact that he himself isn’t suspect, will he be seated in some kind of compromise? There’s tough talk — but whispers of some kind of defused resolution. Just look at the latest developments:
*Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that, while there is legal authority to bar Burris, there is room for compromise:
Appearing on “Meet the Press,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday that while the “legal authority” exists to bar the “tainted” appointment of Roland Burris, there is room to negotiate.
Under the Constitution, Reid said, “we determine who sits in the Senate, and the House determines who sits in the House. So there’s clearly legal authority for us to do whatever we want to do. This goes back for generations.”
Calling Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s appointment of Burris unworthy by association, Reid said, “There is a cloud over Blagojevich, and at this stage, over the state of Illinois. As long as Blagojevich has done the appointing, it’s really a tainted appointment.”
In addition, Reid accused the embattled governor of attempting to mask his problems. “The state of Illinois deserves a vote in the U.S. Senate … it’s too bad Blagojevich has diverted attention from the real issue.”
*Burris has requested to meet with Reid and others and he will on Wednesday.
Senate Democratic leaders have scheduled a meeting with Roland Burris, who was chosen by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, a Democratic source said Saturday.
The meeting between Burris; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada; and Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, one day after the Senate convenes, said the source.
Burris requested Wednesday’s meeting, according to the source, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Burris told CNN he will be in Washington on Monday night and hopes to be seated in the Senate the next day. That puts him on a collision course with members of the Senate Democratic majority, who have vowed to use procedure to prevent Burris from taking the seat.
*A spokesman for the Governor is now charging Reid has a conflict of interest.
Illinois’s embattled governor said through his spokesman Saturday that Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has a conflict of interest regarding the Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
Reid telephoned Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) in early December to discuss the seat, said Lucio Guerrero, a gubernatorial spokesman. Guerrero said he did not know firsthand which candidates Reid supported during the call, but added that he knows Reid’s candidates did not include Roland W. Burris, the man Blagojevich picked.
Senate leaders have vowed to oppose the appointment of Burris.
“I think the governor believes there is a conflict of interest — that Reid showed he has a horse in the race and Roland Burris wasn’t one of them,” Guerrero said.
In an e-mail to the Associated Press, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the assertion that Reid has a conflict of interest was “absolutely ridiculous.”
*The race card is being played to defend Burris’ naming by Gov. Blag. The Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp blog reports:
There’s no talking about the political and possibly legal showdown between Roland Burris and the Senate’s Democratic leaders looming in Congress next week without talking about “the race card.”
“There are no African-Americans in the Senate,” says Rep. Bobby Rush (pictured right), a Chicago Democrat and co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party. “And I don’t think that anyone, any U.S. senator who’s sitting in the Senate, right now, want to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate.”
That would be Burris, the first black official elected statewide in Illinois (both comptroller and attorney general), and now Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointee for the vacant Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama, who was the only African-American member of the Senate.
The Senate’s Democratic leaders – with the full backing of Obama himself – vow to block Burris’ seating in the Senate – not because of Burris himself, but because of who is appointing him, the Illinois governor who stands accused by federal authorities of attempting to sell Obama’s seat to the highest bidder.
Neither Burris nor Obama nor any of the Senate’s leaders want to make this a racial issue. But Rush and others stand ready to make that implication.
So Barack Obama would be a…. racist? Hot Air’s Allahpundit writes of Rush:
Only a neo-segregationist would oppose the Senate’s only black member, says a guy who himself endorsed a white Democrat in the Senate primary four years ago over his old nemesis, Barack Obama. He called Blago’s actions “heinous” earlier this month, too, and agreed with Democratic consensus that he shouldn’t make the appointment before instantly reversing himself yesterday in the interests of racial solidarity. Obama has political capital to spare and multiple reasons here to spend it — tactically, to give Senate Democrats cover and burnish his credentials as the post-racial president, and personally, given his long rivalry with Rush. He should step up and lay this turd out. He’d have plenty of support based on early indications.
The bottom line is that the Democrats are torn between sticking to their political guns on not seating a man appointed by Governor who is alleged to have been looking for a way to cash in on the open Senate seat or seating him, having him serve under a cloud and wind up being accused by Republicans and some others of enabling political corruption.
And, on top of that: there’s their desire to get all the loose ends tied up so they can begin their new session focused on the big issue — the nation’s financial state.
The answer to the possibility of easily tying up loose ends on this matter is: KNOT!
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.