Contempt for democracy
Senate Republicans throw a temper tantrum and gum up the machinery
Contempt for democracy
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Earlier this week, several high-ranking military commanders, all of them currently assigned to U.S. Pacific Command, Strategic Command, and U.S. Forces Korea, boarded planes at their overseas posts and flew half way around the world so that they could testify in Washington yesterday at a long-scheduled readiness hearing conducted by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The generals arrived on time, only to discover that they had wasted their time. The Senate hearing had been canceled.
Meanwhile, in preparation for a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, witnesses from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Government Accountability Office had cleared their schedules to testify yesterday about an issue that's crucial to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan: our training of the national Afghan police, and the need for greater oversight.
But this Senate hearing was canceled, too.
Meanwhile, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee was conducting a session yesterday morning on a sensitive issue - homeless military veterans, and what can be done to help them - when the chairman was informed that the session had to be shut down, pronto, scarcely an hour after it had been convened.
These cancellations and disruptions (among others) were not precipitated by bad weather, or a power outage, or a busted water main, or a national emergency. They happened because the Republicans were behaving like toddlers.
Having failed to get their way on health reform, the losers threw a tantrum and refused to let the grownups get on with the everyday business of governing - actually for the second straight day, thus confirming the recent vow by John "Country First" McCain that there "will be no cooperation for the rest of the year."
It's very easy to gum up the Senate machinery out of sheer spite. By tradition, senators agree each day, via bipartisan "unanimous consent," to schedule their committee hearings throughout the day. But if somebody refuses to give their consent, a characteristically arcane Senate rule kicks in: no hearings can be conducted after 2 p.m., and all morning hearings have to be suspended two hours after the Senate has convened.
Senators have rarely invoked this rule, hewing instead to the daily courtesy of unanimous consent. That's the tradition, for both parties; way back in 1960, one political expert called it "institutional patriotism." More recently, Senate scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote wistfully of that bipartisan era: "Senators were intensely loyal to the Senate as an institution; they identified first as senators, rather than as partisans or through their ideology."
But this current Republican crew apparently has no qualms about trashing the place, even if it means undercutting military commanders and Afghan trainers and homeless veterans - all of whom they profess to care so much about. (If the situation was reversed, and the Democrats were pulling this kind of stunt, the GOP would have already assailed the Democrats for being "against the troops.") So why is the GOP pulling this stunt? As the Democratic chairwoman of the Homeland Security subcommittee lamented yesterday, "I don't get it."
Actually, it's not so hard to get. Grinding all this Senate business to a halt is a way for the party insiders to bond with their unhinged outsiders; it's the polite, parliamentary equivalent of screaming impolite epithets at Democratic House members.
Forcing the cancellation of various Senate military hearings, in the service of a hissy fit, is not remotely as visceral as vandalizing various congressional and Democratic party offices, or leaving death threats on a congressman's voicemail, or sending a picture of a hangman's noose to a black congressman, or cutting the propane gas line at the home of a congressman's brother, or threatening the families of congressmen, but it's precisely the same in one key respect. It's a contempt for democracy.
If this bill is so popular why is the President out selling it campaign-style after passing it Chicago-style? ***WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel to Iowa City Thursday to try to sway the public's opinion of his health care overhaul. It's Obama's first beyond-Washington event aimed at promoting the plan since it was passed Sunday. The president signed it into law Tuesday. The president is scheduled to speak at the University of Iowa, which is in Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack's district. Loebsack voted for the health care bill.*** http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36030970/ns/politics-white_house/— NEPhilly- pj, what is this mania for polling? The only one that counts is in November, as I remember telling others back in 2008 when they were all predicting a debacle for Obama. I'm with NEPhilly on that - I'm happy to wait and see who gets elected - or not. After thinking about it, I've concluded that this behavior has to be a short-lived aberration; they can't keep this up for 8 months. Already, the Republicans on the Senate Finance committee are working with the Democrats so they can have some input into the legislation. The intelligent Republicans, like the Sunnis in Iraq, will quickly see that there is no upside to not having any input into anything. The rest (and there are plenty of them, to be sure) will be left behind, awaiting the Rapture...— Yersinia Pestis
- So bag of cheese, if you don't like someone's opinion you insult them. Got it... you're just as mature as the Republicans in the senate. Got no ideas, just the word "NO!" Go hold your breath and stomp your feet until someone listens to you or does what you want.— James TL
- I'll guarantee you, Pest, that BO, Axelrod, Emmanuel and other high level BO minions are absolutely glued to the polls, have been and will continue to be. I just consult polls for info. The mania you refer to will be at the Waffle House until Nov. And you are absolutely the one I know who thinks that Nov. will work out well for the Ds. Even D pundits admit that the Rs will make significant advances in the House and could take back the Senate. In fact, I haven't read/heard any pundit of any worth say that the Rs won't make significant gains in the House. Shoot me a reference if you have.— pj katauskas
- Oops, meant "the only one I know."— pj katauskas
- Sarah: In most cases I would agree that the private sector can outperform the public sector. (Schools are an example.) In my mind, though, this is not one of them. The private health care sector does not exist to ensure the health of all Americans. It exists to make a profit. And this profit often, if not always, comes at the expense of health. Unlike schools, where if you are dissatisfied with one you can move to another, our arcane and profit-centric health care laws ensure that we are slaves to the system, not its masters. In theoretical capitalism, we should be able to sway the market with our spending. If people don't like a restaurant, they don't go and it shuts down. If people don't like a TV show, they don't watch and it is canceled. We are not so fortunate with health care. What us unfortunate is that the most fundamental right this side of freedom, good health, has become a political issue. Because at least at this point in time in America, when politics becomes involved all rational discourse ceases, as does any hope for finding common ground.— HeywoodEm
- PJ, false insights like "the majority of Americans elected BO believing in vague promises like 'hope and change'" completely devalue your latest 'guarantee'.— PA_Dutch
- Dutch, these are opinions, remember, based on what I read and watched, that's how I sized it up. I'm not alone. I think it was Brooks, or someone, maybe Will, that said that BO purposely kept himself vague, so folks could read into him what that wanted. I think BO himself in a moment of candor in his Audacity book made the same observation about himself. So, my "false insights" are shared by others, probably more astute than you or me. And btw,since your post has no substance at all, it offers no insight whatsoever other than that you disagree with my opinion. And that's no insight at all.— pj katauskas
- GOV'MENT CHEESE-BAG: Did you hear Rush today, DUDE? He said that Conse 'Pubs are the victims, regarding death threats and vandalism to Dems. Isn't he a genius?— Talvenada
- sarah89 : as of 2008, Medicare provided benefits for about 45 million people, not 10. And last I checked, Medicare is still going .....— still_independent
- Does that include the bullet that was shot through the office of Eric Cantor last week? How about the death threats he receives on an almost daily basis for not just being against the healthcare bill but also because he is Jewish? Do those people have contempt for Democracy? Last week, Bart Stupak said his live was a living he$$ because of threats, harassing phone calls, etc. he was receiving, and that was before he said he would vote yes on the bill. Maybe the phony story about a coffin being left on the lawn of Russ Carnahan is a portent of how some of these stories are misleading. Perhaps when the brick was thrown through the Democrat Party offices in Denver last year, which was done by a Democrat Operative, it was a hint of how they would do things themselves to try and blame Republicans, make them seem like extremists. How about when AIG gave bonus payments last year, and ACORN and the SEIU bussed people to the executive homes, and they received death threats, would you call them "radical outsiders"? Funny how there was no story here about their contempt for democracy. What a crock of stuff.— tom - wilmington, de
- still_independent, the first Medicare Advantage cuts, to the tune of $1.8 Billion, take effect this October. Want to be there is a move to repeal the cuts just before the midterm elections?— tom - wilmington, de
- pj, just to clarify my expectations - I don't actually expect the Dems to GAIN seats, though if this fetish for self-immolation on the right continues long enough it's not entirely out of the question; I just don't expect the Dems to lose as many seats as the party in power usually does in a midterm election, and they are in absolutely no danger whatsoever of losing control of either the House or the Senate. So, the majority can be expected to continue to rule, as it is designed to do in a democracy. Thus my optimism.— Yersinia Pestis
- My rights are being taken away! First they took away my right to own slaves. Then they took away my right to prevent women from voting. Now they are taking away my right to keep Health Care away from poor people. This is not the country that our Founding Fathers wanted.— pic man
- If the healthcare bill is so good, and if the 2008 election was about this bill, then why did Pelosi have so much difficulty getting the votes? And still, some Democrats didn't vote for it. Just wondering.— Falls Ed
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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