Filibusters and Raaaaacism (the forgotten saga of Trent Lott)

Every day I become more convinced The Left is living in some bizarro world where world history officially begins on January 20, 2009 and nothing prior to that is relevant.

In the outrage du jour you've got the Harry Reid racist comments thing.

If, 8 years ago, a Republican Senator had said something similar, I bet Democrats would have demagogued it for all it's worth. Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened in 2002. Compare and contrast:

Obama, 2002:

The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.

Obama, 2010:

This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.

And if I can invoke the suddenly forgotten Trent Lott a second time, let's recall the phrase he introduced in 2005: "Nuclear Option".

Back in 2005, those days of yesteryear which liberals have somehow forgotten, 1 in 5 of Bush's Appellate Court nominees were being filibustered. The Republicans had a majority of votes in the Senate but not the 60 needed to end debate on these nominees. The "Nuclear Option" would have changed the Senate rules so only a majority would be required to end debate.

Fast forward to 2010 and now those 2005-obstructionist-liberals are all howling about how awful the filibuster is.

Two weeks ago blogger Uncle Jimbo did a solid fisking of most of these liberal commentators. And after reading his piece, I thought liberals would get their heads back on straight, but apparently not. Today I stumbled upon a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Geoghegan, "Mr. Smith Rewrites the Constitution."

I didn't know much about Thomas Geoghegan prior to reading his op-ed. Googling him reveals him to be a lawyer, author, and failed political candidate.

Allow me to add an item to that bio: Moron.

I'm not wild about name calling, but it gets the point across. Here's why: Only a moron makes vast claims about something being unconstitutional without having an inkling of understanding of the Constitution.

Had Geoghegan ever read the Constitution, he would have read Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2:

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.

That's as clear cut as it gets. If the Senate wants to have "Rules of its Proceedings" that dictate debate can only be cut off with a 60 (or 80! or 100!) vote super-majority, the Constitution gives that authority to the Senate. Period.


Here's the bottom line. Some of us remember 2001-2009. It really did happen. And the disconnect between then and now shows clearly that The Left doesn't care about racist remarks, they just demagogue them for political gain when it's convenient. And it shows they don't actually care about filibusters, they just want to get rid of whatever could possibly be in their way as they try to jam unpopular bills down the throats of the American people.

For the record, Obama is no moderate

Senator Obama attempts to present himself as "post-partisan" and moderate. But he is not.

This is a candidate who has a more liberal voting record than Hillary Clinton. (Or any member of the Senate for that matter.)

Senator Obama likes to throw around the whole "McCain voted the same way as Bush 90 percent of the time" claim. I'm skeptical of the facts behind that because Presidents don't vote in the Senate ... but, if you are giving weight to the report that came to that conclusion, consider for a moment that it also shows that Senator Obama voted with fellow Democrats in the Senate 97 percent of the time.

That's voting 97% percent of the time with the party that, in it's two years of control over the Congress, has brought the approval rating of the Congress to its lowest levels in history (which stands right now around 14%).

It confuses me to no end that voters apparently want to send even more Democrats to the Congress and give Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi a president of the same party who won't get in the way of their extreme, left-of-center, agenda.

Does the average American really believe in redistribution and "spreading the wealth around"? I really hope not.

Eric Massa

Up until I last year I lived in New York congressional district 29. Two years ago, the contest was between Republican Randy Kuhl (incumbent) and Democrat Eric Massa. This year's election reprises that contest.

In 2006, the Iraq War was "pre-surge," still making daily newspaper headlines, and deeply unpopular. Massa's campaigned tried to seize on the unpopularity of the war and ran on a "I served in the military, and I'm against the war" platform. The race was within a couple points and it took a couple days after the election to figure out exactly who won.

My favorite moment of the entire campaign was getting a voicemail message on my cell from a Massa supporter who wanted me to vote for Massa because Kuhl voted in favor of "CAFTA: The Columbian Free Trade Agreement" which would "ship our jobs to Columbia".

Not being utterly ignorant, I knew the bill was the Central America Free Trade Agreement (or, actually - the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement). And having a basic grasp of simple economics, such as the principle of comparative advantage, I'm also not ignorant enough to think free trade is a raw deal. For those and a number of other reasons, I voted Kuhl.

Kuhl is nothing to write home about. He resembles everything I hate about the Republican party. In a debate this past week on a local Rochester TV station, Kuhl basically refused to admit that all the pork he's brought back to the district is, in fact, pork. And, as of tonight, doing a Google search on "Kuhl" and "pork" turns up a post on my blog as the top hit (in which I take Kuhl to task for his porking).

And yet, somehow, Massa winds up being even worse than Kuhl in my book.

Let me see if I can explain using this handy diagram of Massa's campaign (click for a larger version):



At some point, Eric Massa got a hold of a picture of Randy Kuhl and President Bush smiling in the back seat of a limo together. Massa uses this image in several of his TV ads and apparently, has a giant wall sized poster of it that he takes around with him.

Apparently, he thinks the good people of NY-29 can be swayed over like a bunch of 4 year olds using the juvenile logic of "see! see! see! Bush is like soooo evil, and Kuhl is like Bush and so Kuhl is evil. Look, look! They were even in a limo together! And they're smiling!!!!!!"

Those of us that aren't 4 years old say "Wow. Two politicians of the same political party were in a car together. And, what's the big deal again?"

Massa also continues to be anti-war and anti-trade. Given our success in Iraq but the trouble in our economy, I find the anti-trade position to be the more concerning of the two. A few weeks ago I responded on YouTube to his anti-trade ad with the following that I'll quote here:

In 1930, in an attempt to help a troubled economy, the government followed the advice Eric Masssa is advocating in this ad: to move away from free trade towards protectionism.

The result was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, one of the central causes of the Great Depression.

By contrast, the United States saw great economic gains from NAFTA, a policy established under President Clinton!

Our current economic issues come from HUD, Freddie, and Fannie pushing subprime loans, NOT free trade.

I'll at least give Massa the benefit that he allows comments on his videos.

Perhaps the most concerning thing about Massa though, beyond his juvenile "Bush = Kuhl" rhetoric and stance on free trade, is that in his ads he promotes himself as an "independent voice" but he'd be nothing of the sort.

Massa's campaign is being supported by groups that are left-wing (like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and far-left-wing (like the Daily Kos). These groups aren't giving Massa massive amounts of campaign cash to be "an independent voice."

They want him to be their voice and give left-wing Democrats even further control over the Congress. Or, as Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas, puts it:

We have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement's backs and crush their spirits. In the White House, that means getting Obama a broad popular and geographic mandate for change. In the House, that means annihilating the Republican caucus and working toward a 100-seat Democratic majority. In the Senate it means getting to a 60-seat filibuster proof majority.

Any typically Republican voters considering "going Democrat" this cycle may want to think about if they really want to see a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats in Congress under the control of Nancy "you have to rip their face off" Pelosi and Harry "this war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything" Reid.

Finally, I'll leave you with a YouTube video I put together of Massa flatly lying about the Bush record on taxes. I did feel a little out of place putting together something that's an awful lot like an attack ad, but I'm so sick of hearing liberal politicians slander the "Bush tax cuts" as tax cuts that were only for the "super rich" that I thought it important to call one of them out on this:

With Friends Like These

From a technical/political perspective, Hillary Clinton gave a solid speech tonight. If you're a liberal who believes in the things Clinton and Obama do, and you were thinking of not voting for Obama simply because he's not Hillary Clinton, I'm sure you've now "seen the light".

With that said, it was really underhanded and distasteful for her to begin her attack on McCain with "Now, John McCain is my colleague and my friend; He has served our country with honor and courage". It's fine for you to criticize the candidate of the other party, but if you're going to rip into someone with claims that suggest he doesn't care about Americans in financial difficulty or women being discriminated against, cut the crap and avoid the niceties. Friends don't do that to friends.

Also, the whole tying McCain to Bush thing is getting really old. I'm sure millions of American will buy in to this distortion, but McCain's not Bush. He has his own record. Judge him for it and not someone else's. It's no more legitimate to claim that McCain would be four more years of Bush than it would be to say that Obama would be four years like the last two with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid while holding the reigns of Congress - the branch with an approval rating a full 12 points below Bush's. (Their 18% makes Bush's 30% look pretty darn good).

While I'm the tangent of Bush versus Reid/Pelosi, it's worth pointing out that the economy only got bad since they took control of Congress. For instance, here's a handy chart on gas prices:



But back on topic: Pelosi, Reid, and Bush aren't running for President. McCain and Obama are. Judge their records, plans, and promises, not those of people not running.

Holy Goodness... Dems calling to Nationalize Oil Companies

It took me a while to pick my jaw off the floor for this one:

Link: sevenload.com

So, that sneaking suspicion conservatives have that liberals really do want to socialize things is apparently not too far off...

Good write up on this by McQ over at QandO. And several gems from McQ in an earlier post on gas prices, including:

When confronted with the reality that oil must be an integral and growing part of at least the short-term solution to our energy problem the usual suspects retreat into the cave, begin banging their tribal one-note drum and resort to petulant insult rather than signaling a willingness to discuss changing their mind for the good of their fellow citizens. A typical example of that would be the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who, while respectfully calling the Vice President “oil man Cheney” said this:

"So all that Cheney can talk about, the Oil Man Cheney can talk about, is drilling, drilling drilling. But there is not enough oil in America to make that the salvation to our problems."

Of course the 1.5 trillion barrels sitting in western US shale alone, not to mention the 89.5 billion barrels offshore, show Harry Reid to either be incredibly ignorant, in which case he should just keep quiet, or a plain old liar. The fact is the shale reserve alone would fulfill all our energy needs for about 200 years.

"The Oil Man Cheney"? Falling back on an ad-hominem? Give me a break! I would hope for so much better from any Senator, especially a majority leader! Ugh.

And people want persons like Harry Reid to build and operate refineries and/or America's entire oil industry. Genius!

Clinton and Gore on Iraq

Back when, you know, Iraq was a threat with its WMD...

Update: Bruce McQuain, over at QandO, reminds us of all the other Democrats who believed Iraq was, well - in the words of Tom Daschle, "a threat we must address". The list: Bill Cinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockerfeller, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and Bob Graham.

Three Cheers for (Sensible) Lobbying Reform

This blog isn't one that's been much on good news, but here's some.

S.1, or "Senate Bill One", which I blogged about earlier, has passed close to unanimously.

Why is this good news, considering I blogged against the bill? Because it passed with an amendment attached, striking section 220, which is the section I found objectionable. So — wahoo! — Reasonable lobbying reform has passed the Senate!

Also, Senators Coburn (R-OK) & Hatch (R-UT), who voted against the bill have some 'splaining to do. And someone should let Harry "We in the Senate are going to work like everyone else in American does" Reid know that two of his fellow Senators, Brownback (R-KS) and Johnson (D-SD), couldn't even muster enough effort to vote on this bill ... the 19th vote of this Senate session. If you are paid to vote on things, and can't even make it through 19 votes in a row, there's a problem. (And, no, I'm not cutting Johnson any slack. If you suffer a medical condition that is going to keep you from doing your job for months, the honorable thing to do is resign.)

Reid Remembers Who's Commander In Chief

Yes, I know people on the right side of the political spectrum double talk all the time, too. I'll leave it to the people at at Koz to cover that though.

Not that a clear message about Iraq has ever been Harry Reid's strong point, but:

Directly following the election, promising the Democrats would take control and fix Iraq:

"The days of the do-nothing Congress are over," declared Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, in line to become majority leader. "In Iraq and here at home, Americans have made clear they are tired of the failures of the last six years."

- Washington Post, November 9, 2006


And, today, post-Democratic victory, dropping Iraq responsibilities squarely back into the lap of the President:

"The president has the ball in his court now. It is up to President Bush to implement the recommendations of this commission," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

- ABC News, December 6, 2006

Some things in politics never change. Some related advice to those with political aspirations from McQ over at Q&O: be careful what you run on.