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Saturday, January 28, 2006

Hillary Clinton Supports Filibuster

Her office made the announcement late yesterday. This is now a mad dash to show the far-left base that the current Democrats are effective, something folks like Kos have been doubting. But the comedy in all this is how the entire party shored itself up against a filibuster just seven days ago. Lumps were taken, Democrats were moving on to the next game, the Abramoff scandal. Some, to their credit, were even interested in dealing with Iran and the new Palestinian government. Now, a multiday slog has nudged several of them, slowly and each in his own time, into supporting a filibuster. The bulldozers behind it are the radical rich like George Soros and far-left functionaries like Ralph Neas. It’s too early to tell whether they have pushed enough Democrats off the cliff to actually enact a filibuster. But what’s simply hilarious is how slow it has been to work. We have senators like Feinstein reneging wholesale on her earlier categorical statement that a filibuster makes no sense. She had said, “This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be on the court.”

That was a quote meant to be resurrected under a future Democratic presidency. It was a savvy move, and now she’s spoiled it all.

Hillary Clinton, too, has left her moderating quiet and made her quietus with the extreme. So I say again: is this not simply hilarious? It has been so slow to happen, because Democrats clearly do not want to filibuster and think it would be a mistake. And in happening so slowly, the American people are given the highest proof that a possible filibuster would have nothing to do with Judge Alito whatsoever. No action in the Senate in knowable history has been so disingenuous, so smacking of fakery. These are Senators who had made up their minds after the hearings, and then turned a corner with no additional information at all. That’s comedy. The small joke left for the GOP to tell is that it has enough votes for cloture, and in any event a filibuster is still only a filibuster, not a veto.

MORE: Todd Zywicki has comments on the left blogosphere’s influence and links to this Washington Post piece on the topic.

AND: Roger L. Simon: “Clinton does not nearly have the sophisticated political ear of her husband. There’s a time to hold ‘em and a time to fold ‘em. The time to fold ‘em came a long time ago on the Alito nomination.”

Posted on January 28, 2006 08:50 AM. Permalink