It's the obstruction, stupid

The Wall Street Journal is less than sanguine about the Medicare bill winding through Congress right now and says so in an editorial "Bad Political Medicine - Will the Medicare bill help the GOP next year? Don't count on it."

Republicans ought to be spooked that Democrats clearly calculate they have nothing to lose by vehemently opposing this bill. Democrats want to tarnish any GOP victory, to be sure. But they are also preparing the ground to spend the next year--no, 20 years--demagoguing the drug benefit as inadequate.

I'll admit that this expansion of Medicare is a bad law, one that is sure to bury the country (read: younger workers) in debt. I've stated before that I hope the bill goes down to defeat. But, putting that aside and despite the WSJ's hand-wringing, I can't help but believe this will be a huge victory for the GOP going into 2004.

The big advantage I see for Republicans is that they can claim they tried to pass a bill that the Democrats couldn't (even when Clinton was in office and the House and Senate were controlled by Democrats). But since they can't stand to see the Republicans succeed, the Democrats have decided to filibuster this AARP-supported bill. Same story with the energy bill and judicial nominees; the Democrats have become the party of the filibuster, and little else.

Do I exaggerate? Take a look at the last seven votes in the Senate stretching back to last week's marathon debate on judicial nominees: seven cloture votes - seven failures to break Democrat-engineered filibusters.

Americans may or may not understand the details of the Energy or Medicare bills, but they surely understand the persistent sabotoge of majority rule by filibusters.