Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Filibusted

Wednesday February 7, 2007

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Dear Mr. Mullings

Memo to self: Next time you want to get "edgy" and create a ton of e-mails do NOT write about the singer "Prince."

(a) Prince has many, many more fans than you thought.
(b) Not a single one of them has any sense of humor.

The only thing which has the national press corps in a greater projectile sweat than the Scooter Libby trial is the non-binding resolution which the US Senate was to have adopted and hung around the combined necks of the President (intended consequence) and the 150,000 military personnel in Iraq (unintended consequence).

The results of the November election, having been substantially re-edited to fit the current hip political theories as espoused on MSNBC, were being used as evidence that a non-binding resolution against the war in Iraq was a slam-dunk (to use a CIA phrase about the existence of WMDs before the invasion).

Holding hands, and quietly humming Kumbyah, Democrats and Republicans were going to walk side-by-side to the well of the Senate and cast their votes expressing the Senate's desire to get out of Iraq right quick.

We were told, last week that a resolution combining the thoughts of Democrat Joe "Les'-See-Ya'-Dance" Biden with Republican John Warner might get as many as 70 votes.

It seems getting things though the Senate under the control of the D's is no easier than it was when it was under the gavel of the R's.

In the end, a procedural vote to cut off debate (which are generally seen as barometers of how a vote will go on the main piece of business) got only 49 votes - not 70 that had been predicted; not the 60 needed to get the cloture procedure started; not even 50.

Boring Parliamentary Procedure Alert

Sen. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, in the end voted against cutting off debate. Under Senate rules someone who has voted on the prevailing side can, within three days, ask for the vote to be reconsidered.
To preserve that request, Reid voted to cut off debate, but he didn't mean it.

END Boring Parliamentary Procedure Alert

Forgetting about the backroom maneuvering on this thing, it appears the whole SENATE SLAPS BUSH thing has lost much of its luster. If it's this hard to get 60 votes, it's that hard to pretend Senators are taking this very seriously.

Obviously Speaker Nancy Pelsoi agrees with me because she has scheduled a vote in the House on a non-binding resolution despite previously saying she would let the Senate act first.

Hillary Clinton has been hardening her Iraq message every day since she announced for President a couple of weeks ago.

Barak Obama is not noted as a student of military strategy or tactics. He is the current darling of the MoveOn.org wing of the Democratic Party, but there are many who are concerned that he will have to continue moving to his left on Iraq to keep distance between himself and Clinton.

Because Obama is still very new at the national political game, he may find himself not being described as the "leading voice for the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party" but being called "strident," "shrill," "harsh," and - worst of all - "harmful to soldiers serving in Iraq."

So, Democratic Senators, even those who are vehemently opposed to the Administration's Iraq strategy, are very wary of putting their own futures into the hands of a man who is completely untested on the national stage but whom they know will be tested by the Clintonistas in the very near future.

The Democrats had convinced me that they were really ready to rumble on this resolution, to the point that Senator Reid would demand that if the Republicans really want to filibuster this resolution they would have to hold the floor.

If Reid truly believed in the importance of this resolution, he would have said, in effect: "Get out the cots and the Depends, boys, none of us is going home until we get a vote."

Right. It took exactly one month from the time the they convened under Democratic rule for Senators to go right back to politics as usual: Ready, only, to grumble.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Congressional Research Service's guidance on Cloture rules in the Senate; a link to the Historian of the Senate on Filibusters of days gone by; a copyright notice on the "ready to rumble" line; a chilly Mullfoto; and a very sad Catchy Caption of the Day.

Also a NEW Dear Mr. Mullings!

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