Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Thud

From the New Republic:

If Hillary Clinton gives a speech calling for withdrawal from Iraq at 4:15 in the morning, does anybody hear it? Sitting in the nearly empty Senate chamber at the exceedingly painful halfway mark of the Democrats' forced all-night debate on an amendment to start redeploying troops from Iraq, the answer is pretty clearly no. As to whether it made a sound--a metaphorical sound, that is; an impact on any wavering Republicans or a consolation to the base--that's a big no, too. The purpose of forcing a filibustering opposition to actually stay on the floor has always been to milk that tactic's Mr.-Smith-Goes-To-Washington-style high camp and theater. But thanks to the war's peculiarly nasty politics, Democrats couldn't play it up, and the thing was a flop.
And here's more from Rick Moran and Captain Ed. In hindsight, it looks like the Democrats were looking for a quorum call so that they could accuse the GOP of ducking debate, but instead Mitch McConnell rallied the Republicans and even Harry Reid didn't stick around for his own show. As predicted, Americans loved the empty grandstanding: "Americans Give Democratic Congress All-Time Low Rating."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be a serious investment of faith (and a misreading of polling history) to see good tidings for the GOP in a bad Congressional rating.

Brian said...

E,

I thought of you the moment I read this.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/07/19/heck-why-not-just-burn-him-at-the-stake/

Anonymous said...

Forbes.com:

Such levels are significantly low for a president, and poor but less unusual for Congress... Ominously for Republicans hoping to hold the White House and recapture Congress next year, Bush's support has plunged among core GOP groups like evangelicals, and pivotal independent swing voters... Unlike the president, Congress usually has low approval ratings no matter which party is in control, and poor poll numbers have not always meant the majority party suffered on Election Day... A majority in a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey in late June said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country... The AP's June survey showed that compared with an AP exit poll of voters in November 2004, Bush's approval was down among swing voters. His support dropped from about half of independents to a fifth; from half to a third of Catholics; and from nearly half to a fifth of moderates... "Everything about this race will be about George Bush and the mess he left," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a member of the House Democratic leadership, said about 2008. "He'll be on the ballot."