The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Congress

by DemFromCT

Now that Congress is back in session, avoiding the people's work to get relected is the order of the day. Forget about the economy, health care, gas prices or the war In Iraq. Forget about immigration reform, an issue that Republicans and conservatives on southwestern Main Streets actually care about.

Immigration is the most melancholy element of a depressing Republican year. The Iraq intervention and its aftermath have hurt, and Republican inattention to runaway government spending has been deplorable. But immigration is the issue most likely to cause rank-and-file Republican voters to stay home on Election Day, and it may cost the party its congressional majorities.

Republicans have decided that national security is all they've got as an edge (even if it's tied or a razor thin edge and more importantly, even if only a third of the country think we're winning the WoT™). To push that, the Daddy party is going to get tough with terrorists.

House and Senate Republican leaders plan to focus congressional attention almost exclusively on national security, hoping to draw clear distinctions between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the November elections. Topping the to-do list is passing legislation officially sanctioning the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping of suspected terrorist communications. The eavesdropping has been carried out without warrants since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A federal judge in Detroit recently ruled the program illegal.

There's only one minor problem:

Deepening Republican divisions over the future of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program may jeopardize GOP leaders' hopes of making terrorism surveillance legislation a centerpiece of their final legislative push this month.

Republican leaders have planned to produce legislation by month's end that would give the administration as much latitude as possible to continue the program. But that effort may be splintering. The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider as many as four contradictory bills on the issue tomorrow and could approve all of them. That would leave it to Senate leaders and the White House to sort out how to proceed.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders and the chairmen of the House Judiciary and intelligence committees are coalescing around surveillance legislation that goes beyond legislation negotiated by Vice President Cheney and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

Hmm... the future of the Republican majority is in the capable hands of the hypercompetent (ex-)Dr. Frist (who failed to keep up with the continuing education needed to renew his TN license). And of course, the Senate and the House don't agree, just like immigration reform.

Ever get the impression the wheels are coming off this thing?

Comments

[selise]

today on c-span3:

the house judiciary "Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Legislative Hearing on "Legislative Proposals to Update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." (H.R. 4976, H.R. 5223, H.R. 5371, H.R. 5825, S. 2453, and S. 2455.) "

http://judiciary.house.gov/schedule.aspx
http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/schedule.csp

[DemFromCT]

More R strife:

GOP Senators Differ With President on Military Trials
Terrorism Suspects' Right To Information Is at Issue

Leader Frist has the Senate nailed, eh?

[demtom]

This is only tangential to the subject, but the best place I can find to post it: god bless Florida GOP voters for helping make sure the '07 Senate is no better by nominating Harris. I'd feared Democrats had done their job too well, that primary voters would narrowly pick a less toxic candidate. But there, as in RI, the right wing seem determined to ease the way for Democratic victory.

Come to think of it, maybe it's not so off-topic. Right-wing hubris, even in the face of poll collapse, is one of the things making it so difficult for Frist to keep his caucus together. In the old days, a Bob Dole would have found a face-saving way to pass something that provided cover for the party. But, at this point the righties are in rule-or-ruin mode; they're no more reality-based than their president, and they seem to think they'll get what they want by sheer force of will, public opinion be damned. It's an attitude I remember well, from the 60s/70s, on the left. I expect things to end about as happily for today's right as it did for that era's left.

[Redshift]

Republicans are in disarray! And this is actually true, unlike the standard media narrative of trying to paint the difference between "start pulling out of Iraq by the end of the year" and "start pulling out of Iraq next year" as a huge split.

[Mimikatz]

And, via Laura Rozen, the Senate can't pass the Intelligence Authorization Bill for the second year in a row, thus avoiding any opportunity for oversight. Why should anyone give these clowns another 2 years?

[DHinMI]

demtom is right on the brittle legislative strategy of the GOP. In the past, the wingers would try to take out Dole or Lott because they were too accomidating; you know, they actually figured out ways to pass legislation. Now they've finally got a Senate leader who's more concerned with serving the right than passing legislation (to go along with the intransigent types in the House), and the result is that they'll probably finally lose control because they were too obsequieous to the right.

[dlake]

Why work on Immagration when they have done nothing of any importance the whole term. Besides, Rove has orders to talk FEAR FEAR and more FEAR.
I think the Dems will try to extend things so Republicans have to stay over the expected time in congress instead of campaigning on fear and also make it impossible for the Republicans to do any more damage to the country by passing their agenda.