are assured of nothing if only defeat.
The "Deal" was supposed to return "comity" to the world's most
deliberative, yet reactionary body, the U.S. Senate. It was supposed to
return the Senate to doing the people's business, and not upstage and
overshadow the "kids [that] are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The last thing we want to do as a nation is to distract the Senate from
doing the big things that have been neglected."
That oblique and self-serving nonsense was uttered by Senator Lindsey
Graham, (R, SC), an acolyte of the much-beloved media "maverick," Senator
John McCain (R, AZ), who summed-up the real reason for this "Deal" when
he said "I don't think the president won or lost. I think the
institution of the Senate won."
Indeed, part of the Senate did win. Democrats, emboldened by Republican
faint-heartedness and what can only be described as the ineptitude of the
majority, capitalized early by filibustering the nomination of John Bolton
to the United Nations, in which the New York Times shamefully
called the failed cloture vote against Bolton "a delay."
But what of the "Deal" to avert the nuclear option? What of the comity of
the Senate? What of the people's business?
Ronald Reagan once said "Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest
profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance
to the first."
You wonder if these seven Republican senators, as they bask in the power
and privilege of the majority, thought of this as they thwarted the will
of the president and casually discarded most of his judicial nominees.
You wonder if, for lack of a more civil, yet wholly deserved sentiment,
they though about the senatorial screwing they gave to all concerned with
seeing a Republican majority act upon the mandate given to them by a
majority of the voters.
Yes, it's partisan, but so what? That's what elections are for. The
winners do not "share" power with the losers. The minority does not
"co-rule" with the majority. But then again, these axioms that hold true
for most everyone else in the United States, is openly--and more
lately--serially ignored in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Frankly, the Senate is a supranational body that serves the needs of the
100 "presidents-in-waiting," possibly none more so than John McCain.
Party loyalty or discipline--or even the straight-forward and fair process
of an up or down vote for a president's nominees--has become fractured and
diluted.
As John Bolton dangles upon the rope that Senate Democrats have tied him
up with, Bolton might take comfort in knowing that he is not alone. Next
to him are 1 president, 13 Appeals Court nominees, 48 Republican Senators,
and a whole lot of "broken-glass Republicans" who did not bargain for
this.
But I do not blame the Democrats. They are the minority party, and
obstruction and delay are what the minority party does in Washington.
There is little else they can do. But, Democrats have access to the
"enlightened" members of the majority. To these seven senators, the idea
of party discipline and majority control is to speak first at the
press-podium before a pack of left-leaning journalist signing their
praises.
To the GOP, I say yet again: Put up or get put out.
