Republican senators Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski, and Scott Brown will join Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in voting for the standalone bill to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. I think that adds up to 61 votes in favor of repeal and that constitutes a slim but decisive majority in the 100-member Senate. It looks like the Obama administration is going to get this done and people are going to have to give Joe Lieberman a ton of the credit for it. Lieberman has been essential to the effort and it’s going to be a very important mitigating factor in assessing his overall career. I’d also note that Rep. Patrick Murphy was the leader of the repeal effort in the House. He was defeated in November, so this will be his most important legacy as a politician (assuming he doesn’t run for and win some office in the future). In some ways Murphy disappointed me, especially in his inexplicable hostility to the DREAM Act, but also by joining the Blue Dog caucus, voting for AT&T on warrantless surveillance, and a few other more nitpicky things. But Murphy was still an excellent congressman overall and showed real leadership in a few areas. His constituents were stupid to vote him out, and that would be true even if he hadn’t just won a seat on the Appropriations Committee. I would support Murphy again for high office and I hope we haven’t seen the last of him. But I also hope he figures out why he’s a jackass on issues related to Latino immigration.
In any case, I think we’re going to see and end to the DADT policy as long as we can find time to get the Senate to vote on it. Let’s hope they succeed in ratifying the New START Treaty. I consider it kind of important:
Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a “virtual mafia state”, according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.
Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus: the cables paint a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime.
Don’t you think we might want to keep an eye on their nukes?
Holy Joe is on my teevee saying we have 61 votes. Says a vote is up to Harry Reid. Wants Reid to take up DADT on Saturday night and go back to START treaty.
Lieberman says they may surprise and get 62 or 63 votes.
I don’t think they should go home until both START and DADT are passed.
I agree with doing DADT before START.
Basically, republicans think it’s fine to endanger the long term welfare of the country if it serves a momentary political need. I await the explanation of how their policy of selfish obstruction is absolutely necessary to protect the heroic and patriotic small businessman’s marginal tax breaks.
Yes, and it works for them. So they’ll keep doing it as long as it works.
How long have you been watching Republicans? Other than a few “moderates” they rarely bother to explain their votes. They pound the table instead.
If they give an explanation, it’s usually “policy X was something Democrats wanted therefore it’s bad”. And their constituencies reward them with money and votes. If policy X is actually something good for businesses (big businesses – small business need not apply here) their palms will be greased and they’ll find a way to support policy X while making sure they aren’t seen as agreeing with a Democrat over it.
That’s been their political strategy since Newt, for the most part. And it’s worked for them, for the most part. They continually get rewarded for their bad behavior until they cause a giant clusterfuck (which is what happened in 2008). But even then as the minority party they can sit back, stonewall, and make sure it can’t be fixed. Because they know how the two party system in the US works and if one party can’t fix things, the other party gets control even if the other party was the one responsible for breaking it in the first place.
Hey, we’re not all morons.
Not a fan of HuffingtonPost, but that was a decent read.
The comment thread below though… yeesh.
I usually read Bob at his awesome blog, but I followed a link to HP.
I laugh at that column. I guess Cesca never heard of RFK. Second, I think Cesca misreads the point Markos was trying to make. Part of, if not the whole point, is that Obama(and DC Democrats generally) suck at messaging. I mean just look at Obama’s supposed comments after the CEO summit. What’s good for CEO’s is good for America? Really? But what it comes down to is another whiny ass telling everyone: “Shut up. The President is doing the best we can, even though we have little evidence of it.” I mean, I was over at an Obama fanboy blog today(which banned me because I dare question them about the President’s comments at the CEO summit). They think Congress is stopping Obama from closing Gitmo, not even thinking that they could be doing Obama’s dirty work for him. Cesca needs to look in the mirror.
yes, because leaked comments from a meeting is the same as Obama’s “messaging”. sigh.
Yep, we’re up with that.
Got any ideas on how to stop them in their tracks?
I wish. If there were an easy solution I’m fairly certain that the Dems in charge in the Senate, the House and the White House would have done it. Despite what a lot of people on various blogs seem to believe, Pelosi, Reid and Obama are not idiots. If there were an easy solution they would have solved it by now.
Sadly I’m worried that we can’t fix it until they really fuck things up. I thought they’d already done that in 2007, but apparently as fucked-up as they made things it wasn’t bad enough – the half solutions that came through were a good enough band-aid to keep people limping along.
Part of me thinks it’s somewhat inevitable that the Republicans will retake control of all three branches of government again in 2012 – and then shift us back over the cliff for another 2-4 years as that works to remind everyone of exactly why they got shut down in ’08 in the first place. Another part of me thinks that the demographic shift is working against Republicans and 2012 will be a surprise where people actually turn out to vote again (as they tend to do in presidential elections) and Republicans will once again be shut out for two years until the next midterms. Which will lead to a bouncing back and forth of power in the Congress until Democrats figure out that the only way to enact long-term change is to fight and vote in every election, not just the presidential ones.
Neither of those scenarios seem particularly rosy to me. Especially when we add in that Republicans took back most of the state governments this time around – just in time to redraw boundaries from the most recent census. Sigh.
I think what Booman criticized as creative destruction is the only way. Let the hostages start dying. It is a horrible policy, but in the long term its better and it might be the only way to move forward even in the medium term.
Maybe even the short term.
Some people (including the White House according to rumors so we don’t know) is casting this as DADT v. START II. One or the other because of time constraints.
“In some ways Murphy disappointed me, especially in his inexplicable hostility to the DREAM Act, but also by joining the Blue Dog caucus, voting for AT&T on warrantless surveillance, and a few other more nitpicky things. “
easy for you to say. I call canada every single day and my calls are tapped due to people like Murphy. And then his staff had the gall to lie about it when i called and complained.
so yeah, just a little nitpickiness. Only a teensy weensy little violation of my due process rights, only a tiny intrusion into my privacy with no compelling reason.
just a smidgen.
Fuck him.
I don’t think they should go home until both START and DADT are passed
Slightly OT, but only slightly.
The tyranny of the minority on display tonight in the US Senate and my letters to Majority Leader Reid and Senator Murray (that I realize are likely never to be read by either of them) …