McConnell Wins Again
Being in the opposition suits Mitch McConnell well; once again, he has turned back Senate Democrats in their bid to pass their meaningless anti-surge resolution:
The Senate gridlocked on the Iraq war in a sharply worded showdown on Saturday as Republicans foiled a Democratic attempt to rebuke President Bush over his deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops.
The vote was 56-34. That was four short of the 60 needed to advance the measure, which is identical to a nonbinding resolution that Democrats pushed through the House on Friday.
”The Senate, on behalf of the American people, must make it clear to the commander in chief that he no longer has a rubber stamp in Iraq,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in the final moments before the vote.
Republicans blasted him and the Democratic leadership for refusing to allow a vote on an alternative that ruled out any reduction in money for troops in the field.
”A vote in support of the troops that is silent on the question of funds is an attempt to have it both ways,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP leader. ”So we are asking for an honest and open debate.”
This is more than a symbolic victory over a symbolic resolution, however; it is instead a signal that if Congressional Democrats think that they can ‘slow bleed’ the war to death without a fight, they have another think coming. The evenly split Senate is the obstacle in their path, and with one of their 51 members being Joe Lieberman, we see once again how crucial a role he will play in the upcoming battles.
Congratulations to the Senate Republican leadership on a job well done…
who were the 7 rep senators who voted with the dems?
I’m surprised the Republicans handled the issue so well. I guess they learned
something from the Democrats when they were in the minority.
Their next step should be to run against a “Do Nothing” Congress.
The usual suspects:
Sens. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) are all up for re-election in 2008, and all hail from states that are not exactly fertile electoral ground for pro-war votes. Collins is one of the few moderates left in the chamber, while Coleman and Smith have voting records that place right among mainstream conservatives.
Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) are solid moderates whose only political danger would ever come from within their own party in a primary.
And Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and John Warner (R-Va.) can be described as conservative mavericks, with Hagel becoming an opponent of the war early on and Warner flipping last October.
Mark, you have a strange idea of victory. Because this is a resolution, not a bill, the cloture vote is effectively the same thing as the final vote. It’s clear from the vote totals how a majority of the Senate feels. That was the point. Why do you think Harry Reid went ahead with the vote even though he knew he didn’t have the numbers? The republicans were able to a filibuster a resolution that the vast majority of Americans support. How is that a victory? It just shows how out of touch the Republican party is.
Anonymous, with all due respect (and I do consider you a friend) – that’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Go spin that at Media Matters – you know damn well that Reid wanted to have that debate and vote on the surge. For cryin’ out loud, I’m truly insulted that you would peddle such a load of garbage…
If your theory was correct, they wouldn’t even have had the vote, because thay already had a a cloture vote.
Rubbish…
In fact, I challenge you to show me one person besides Harry Reid or another Democratic hack or progressive blogger who thinks that vote was a victory for the Democrats…
I have a Democrat friend at work that is peeved at the Democrats for doing this. He feels that with control of Congress they should be focusing on other issues that actually make a difference to the average person. He is not happy at them right now.
Even Salon, Anonymous, reports it this way:
“Democrats Fail To Force Senate Vote On Iraq”…
Here’s the lede to the NY Times article:
Senate critics of President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq failed Saturday in a renewed effort to force debate on a resolution opposing the administration’s military strategy.
The Democrats succeeded in putting the Senate on record against the escalation in Iraq. With roughly two thirds of votes cast, they achieved a sizable plurality. The bipartisan vote included seven Republicans, five more than the similar vote a few weeks ago. Not only did the Democrats win — they have momentum on their side.
The only thing they failed to do was achieve the supermajority of sixty votes, which they may well have received if all one hundred Senators voted. The Republicans, who loudly insisted on up-or-down votes when they had the majority, are hiding behind a filibuster because they are too scared to debate the issue.
Why are the Republicans afraid to debate the escalation? As their leaked memo indicates: because it’s a loser. When debated on the merits, they have an unsupportable case. As Hagel said: if you want to avoid tough votes, then work in a shoe store. There are at least 56 Senators who are willing to go on the record regarding the escalation. It’s regrettable that there are enough Republicans who lack the courage to go on the record and hide behind a filibuster instead.
Or put another way: if the Republicans in the Senate truly believed in an escalation, then they should be proud to have a debate and put their name on a resolution supporting it.
Why do you suppose they are so afraid to do this?
Peter, you and Anonymous keep on thinking the Democrats won this vote, if that makes you feel good. How did this vote differ from the last one? Why did they do it again?
Nope, Reid got his tail kicked for a second time. Your precious New York Times knows it, you know it, I know it…
No one doubted that a majority of the Senate opposed the surge…but that’s not what this vote was on, and I don’t give a damn how you spin it.
By the way, the surge is apparently working quite well, as I’m about to post…
Here’s Charles Schumer coming unglued:
After Republicans blocked a Senate debate for a second time, Democrats said Saturday they’ll drop efforts to pass a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq and instead will offer a flurry of anti-war legislation “just like in the days of Vietnam.”
The tough talk came a day after the House of Representatives passed its own anti-Iraq resolution and as the GOP used a procedural vote to stop the Senate from taking a position on the 21,500 troop increase.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats would be “relentless.”
“There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment . . . just like in the days of Vietnam,” Schumer said. “The pressure will mount, the president will find he has no strategy, he will have to change his strategy and the vast majority of our troops will be taken out of harm’s way and come home.”
Sound like a man who just won to you? Bring it on, Chuck…
This is all going to come down to Joe Lieberman and what he feels he needs to do. If the Dems keep this up they are going to lose controle of the Senate, and the first thing the Republicans should do is launch investigations into how the media have been spinning this war as a defeat. I mean the absolute and outright lies being told by the msm have been shown time and again and we need to get these reporters and executives under oath and in front of some committees. If the Republicans have to promise Joe whatever he wants we need to. We need to get after Murtha staff and find out where his campaign contributions came from etc… put the heat on.
I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how getting two thirds of the vote is getting your tail kicked.
How did this vote differ from the last one? Five more Republicans — including John Warner — voted against an escalation. Both houses of Congress are now on record opposing an escalation of the conflict. Since Bush has ignored the wishes of the electorate, the rest of the world, and the ISG, Congress is the only force which can stop him. The significance of today’s vote is that it is the first step in bringing this catastrophe to an end.
Peter, the vote on the surge did not happen. You seem to willfully be blocking out what happened here. Let me help you:
The Saturday vote was a procedural decision on whether the Senate should move on to a final vote on a resolution that expresses opposition to Bush’s plan.
The procedural vote did not get the 60 votes it needed to move forward. The Senate vote on the surge did not happen.
You’re fooling yourself…
And here, Peter, from the New York Times:
A vote to open debate would have allowed the Senate to begin considering the identical language that was approved on Friday by the House. The resolution states, in part, that “Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”
Without 60 votes for the procedural motion, the Senate was unable to start debate.
There WAS NO VOTE ON THE SURGE. The vote was to start debate, and it failed to carry…
And Peter, if the Dems had got two-third of the vote, it would have carried. Instead, they got exactly 56% of the Senate. And this can’t be expressed enough – the 56% was to open debate on the anti-surge resolution. I repeat, there was no Senate vote on the surge.
That’s not spin, it’s fact…
Mark, please, take a step back for a moment. Reid and everyone else in Washington has known all week that they were very unlikely to get the 60 votes they needed for cloture. Yet he held this vote on a Saturday and made a big deal out of it anyway. Why do you think he did that?
Do you really not see what’s going on here? The Democrats have no problem with the story being “Republicans block debate on Iraq resolution.” They think that plays to their benefit. And they’re right. A sizable majority of the public has turned against the war and wants Congress to do something about it. By blocking a vote on this resolution, the Republicans don’t look good. I’m sure Reid would have loved to have had more votes. But he’s perfectly content with allowing the Republicans to look obstructrionist and out of touch. That’s why he held the vote in the first place. Do you really think the final vote total came as shock to Democratic leaders? Do you really think McConnel stuck it to them? Please. Wake up.
No, Anonymous, I’m afraid it’s you who have fallen for the spin. Reid called a Saturday vote, and declared victory, because he knew he would never get the sixty votes necessary to debate the measure. It’s called polishing a turd, if you’ll pardon the expression.
And if Reid can’t get sixty votes for this, what chance will he have for measures that really matter?
Look at Charles Schumer’s reaction, and tell me again that this was a happy day for Senate democrats…
Mark, Democrats like Shumer are sounding outraged because that’s what people want to hear. People are outraged about this war and want Congress to do something. Shumer and others are hoping to direct that frustration at the GOP for blocking this vote. This is politics 101.
Ah, but Mark, the circumstances are constantly in flux. Absent miracles in Iraq, as time progresses it will become increasingly unteneble for Republicans to continue to support the war. 7 Republican Senators have broken with the administration already. Others will follow, slowly but surely. This is but the beginning.
Yes, yes, you’ve got it all figured out. Meanwhile, some of us are still trying to win the war, and the surge is going on, and it’s apparently doing quite a bit of good…
One point I would like to make is that my friends that come back from Iraq say that we never hear bout all the good things we do for the people of Iraq. Perhaps a debate on that is what we need.Perhaps Ried and the “we wanna lose” caucus should consider the high costs of their actions. If they have the stones to cry about it maybe they should have the stones to make it a binding resolution and stand and be counted. But they know if they did that they will feel like Custer in ’08 as Shrillary will have to explain how she voted for it before she voted against it.(sound familiar?)Also, i believe that Ried had the vote on saturday so Joe Lieberman wouldn’t vote as he observes the sabbath on saturday and did no campaigning on saturdays in 2000, so he probably wouldn’t vote today either. Maybe the dems could do something more than pander to our sworn enemies. Ialso am sick of the whining about how Bush sent them inot Iraq without the proper equiptment when Clinton cut the budget 7 yrs of his presidency and when jeffords jumped the dems held back on Bushes’ budget in the brief time before it started. Its sad the democrats are so misguided these days that they take their ques from loons like Arianna Huffington and Sean Penn. Thank you for your blog as this is my first ever. God bless our troops and their leaders who work tirelessly to win, the only way democracy will fail is if we fail them by withdrawing our support.
Mark is of course correct, there was no vote on the surge or the war in Iraq in the Senate.
Missing from this discussion is the fact that the Republicans were willing to debate the measure provided the Senate would include the measure offered by Judd Gregg in the discussion. Thus it was the Republicans who wanted a full debate of the current policy and its implications.
Democrats only wanted to make a politically expedient, non-binding statement. Republicans were right not to allow them to do so.
Re post 17 and 18: Given the way the Senate operates, a vote on closure is tantamount to a vote on the surge. It’s pretty obvious that the 56 Senators would vote against the surge, and it is only the obstructionism of the Senate GOP which prevents them from explicitly doing so.
Re post 19: 56 votes out of 90 cast = 62.2%. Not bad for an evenly divided Senate.
Re the Gregg amendment: this is anything but the desire to have a full debate. Instead, it is a transparent effort to fog up the situation with the non-issue of whether those voting on the measure “support the troops.” Gregg’s bill conflates providing adequate funding for soldiers on the ground — which nobody opposes — with an open-ended commitment to keep them there in perpetuity. They become unable to reduce the number of troops on the ground because doing so would de-fund those who are there. It’s political theater: if the Democrats vote no, they are accused of “not supporting the troops,” and if they vote yes, they throw out the only Constitutional option they have the end the war. It’s transparently not about what we should do to end the fiasco in Iraq: it’s fodder for thirty second attack ads. It is as cynical and meaningless as anything you will ever see come out of Washington.
The issue is whether we should escalate American involvement in Iraq, not who supports the troops. It is obvious that the Republicans want to talk about everything except what to do about the quagmire in Iraq. The leaked memo confirms this. You cannot avoid the fact that after four years of a disastrous war, Americans deserve to hear a debate in the Senate about how to proceed, and it is the Republicans who are preventing this from happening.
However, outside the world of political junkies, this is surely another step in the long and slow demise of the Republican party. I’m old enough to remember VietNam, and the parallels are inescapable. When faced with a disastrous war spinning out of control, the White House refused to cut our losses and escalated instead. The Republicans had the White House for 20 of the next 24 years. November’s elections were the start of a sea-change where the pendulum will shift back to the Democrats, and Bush’s insistence on escalation in the face of popular demands to de-escalate will only accelerate this process. You want to have fun and games in Washington and block debate? Fine: but people are smart enough to see through it. Any victory for the Republicans here — if there is one — is a Pyrrhic victory.
Sorry, cloture
Peter:
Gregg’s bill conflates providing adequate funding for soldiers on the ground — which nobody opposes — with an open-ended commitment to keep them there in perpetuity.
Nonsense. The adequate funding for soldiers on the ground is explicitly opposed by John Murtha, whose “Slow Bleed” ideas have the endorsement of Nancy Pelosi.
The surge is not an open-ended commitment to keeping our soldiers their in perpetuity. It is intended to last until late summer, though of course, circumstances could change…
Talk about fogging the issue…
1) The Washington Post reported this week that the army is behind procurement of advanced Humvee protection against roadside bombs, but the administration is so eager to send soldiers into war that they will be sent without this protection. A week or two ago, the administration announced plands for reduced funding for VA hospitals.
a) in your opinion, is this supportive of the troops?
b) John Murtha has yet to file his bill, so it is unclear what will be in it. However, it is likely to include restrictions for sending soldiers to battle without adequate protection. In what way does that deny adequate funding for the troops?
2) The surge is open-ended. Otherwise the administration would announce its expiry. Absent Congressional intervention, it is hopelessly naive to expect that the troop level at the end of the summer will be the same as it was in January. Do you really think that the chaos in Iraq will subside in six months?
Peter, the Washington Post reported on, and I blogged about it, and I’m sure you saw it, a Murtha conference call where he basically said that he was ‘prettying up’ his proposal to make it about ‘readiness’ because his attempts to be honest about stripping funding to end the war wouldn’t sale. Glad to see you’re falling for it hook, line, and sinker…
I would add that just because someone voted for cloture, it doesn’t mean that they necessarily would have voted in favor of the bill — Ben Nelson (D-NE) essentially said that his position amounted to as much. And I think we can all recognize that the senators who were not present knew that their non-votes would essentially be going against cloture, so you still get 56%.
Re the Murtha news conference: I’ve been playing golf so I missed the news cycle, and didn’t see the reporting or your blogging about it. However, while it is uncertain whether a cap on spending will pass, it appears increasingly likely that Congress will take up the issue sooner rather than later. You and others have said that if the Democrats want to stop the war, they should vote to cap or reduce spending. Now that there is a movement to do exactly that — with John Murtha leading it — you are complaining that they are doing the very thing you said they should do. Something wrong with this picture?
Re the cloture vote: I’m not sure which ten Senators missed the vote, but one of them was Biden, who presumably would have voted to have the debate. Whether the others missed it because they support the escalation, oppose it, or were simply too cowardly to vote is something I don’t know. However, it is wrong to assume that the ten votes which didn’t happen would all be to choke off the debate.
Well, since you missed it, let me bring you up to speed with what the Washington Post reported:
[Murtha] would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops. In an interview carried Thursday by the Web site MoveCongress.org, Mr. Murtha said he would attach language to a war funding bill that would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and prohibit units from shipping out if they do not train with all of their equipment. His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to “stop the surge.” So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill — an action Congress is clearly empowered to take — rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. “What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with,” he said.
Mr. Murtha’s cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq “would be more stable with us out of there,” in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce “massive civilian casualties.” He says he wants to force the administration to “bulldoze” the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to “get our troops out of the Green Zone” because “they are living in Saddam Hussein’s palace”; could he be unaware that the zone’s primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?
It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership. Yet when asked about Mr. Murtha’s remarks Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support. Does Ms. Pelosi really believe that the debate she orchestrated this week was not “the real vote”? If the answer is yes, she is maneuvering her party in a way that can only do it harm.
You see anything dishonest or worth complaining about there?
But by all means, embrace the Murtha plan…that’s your right – just be honest about what it is, and don’t hide behind the ‘readiness’ facade…
Let me highlight the key claim made by Murtha in the conference call and case you missed it in the long excerpt:
His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to “stop the surge.”
If someone wanted to vote for cloture on the resolution and wasn’t present, then he is an idiot. So, I’m not surprised that Biden forgot to show up.
Re 33 and 34: the Post excerpt is from an editorial, not a news report. The Times had a similar editorial. However, let’s forget the distinction and assume that it is accurate and fair. If this is the wrong bill to bring to the floor, then fine: someone will write a better bill. I think there should be an up-or-down vote on whether to fund sending more troops to Iraq, and my guess is that there will be a bill introduced in the House after the Continuing Resolution mess is sorted out. The issue is what, if anything, Congress ought to do regarding the escalation of the war, not whether Murtha’s bill is transparent or opaque. I think Murtha is a latter-day Eugene McCarthy: a flawed individual who turns out to be a lightning rod for controversy and the one who starts the long chain of events which results in the end of American involvement in a catastrophic war.
Re 35: agreed — Biden is an idiot for choosing a campaign appearance in his hopeless attempt to be nominated over voting on the resolution.