Informed Speculation

The Republicans may be taking the rap for it in the Senate (though surely if the Gregg Amendment were so harmless, it could have been allowed into the Senate debate), but what about the House? Here’s Lindsey Layton in the Washington Post:

Democrats pledged to bring courtesy to the Capitol when they assumed control of Congress last month. But from the start, the new majority used its muscle to force through its agenda in the House and sideline Republicans.

And after an initial burst of lawmaking, the Democratic juggernaut has kept on rolling.

Of nine major bills passed by the House since the 110th Congress began, Republicans have been allowed to make amendments to just one, a measure directing federal research into additives to biofuels. In the arcane world of Capitol Hill, where the majority dictates which legislation comes before the House and which dies on a shelf, the ability to offer amendments from the floor is one of the minority’s few tools.

Last week, the strong-arming continued during the most important debate the Congress has faced yet — the discussion about the Iraq war. Democrats initially said they would allow Republicans to propose one alternative to the resolution denouncing a troop buildup but, days later, they thought better of it.

“It sounds like we’re not doing what we said we would do — I understand that,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday. “Here, however, we believe we are very justified in one of the most important issues confronting the country, which clearly was a huge issue in the election and which got bottled up in the Senate.”

Bottled up in the Senate? But my liberal friends have assured me, with an incredible ability to ignore what actually occured, that there was a vote on the surge that passed overwhelmingly.  And what’s this about no amendments on the ‘most important issues’? Shouldn’t those be the ones that get debated the most openly?

No, the only difference between the House and the Senate is that Reid’s smaller margin and the institution’s procedural rules denied him an opportunity for grandstanding.  So why did Reid allow the vote? Surely not, as our liberal friends have asserted, to ‘get the majority of the Senate on the record’ against the surge.  A majority of the Senate had already failed to win the 60 votes necessary to open debate (though 5 additional Republicans did cross over).

No, Reid held the vote (on a Saturday, traditionally the slowest news day, where coverage would be relatively muted) to pay off the activist base.  He had to be seen as doing something, futile though it might be.  As Mickey Kaus puts it, while noting that the surge seems to be meeting with some degree of success:

What if it comes up in a debate: “And you opposed the increase in troops which is what finally brought relative peace to Baghdad…” How much better for these Democrats if a)they can placate the left by telling primary voters they support some sort of anti-surge resolution but b) they don’t have to actually vote on a resolution because it never gets enough votes for cloture, so there’s no actual vote that can be hung around their necks. That’s win-win! And gee, that’s what actually seems to have happened in the Senate. Funny thing. I smell Kabuki. If there’s one thing United States Senators are good at it’s engineering a stalemate that lets everyone posture in whatever way they think will help them. …

Or, in the classic parlance, the Senate Democrats are trying to have their cake and eat it, too…