It's Harry Reid's Fault

Some analysis by Steve Benen at TPM on the new mantra on Congress: it's not that Bush is playing dictator, or that the Republicans have filibustered every bit of meaningful legislation in the Senate. It's that the Democrats, under the leadership of Harry Reid, are not compromising enough.

His prime target is this editorial from WaPo, which displays a breathtaking measure of Through-the-Looking-Glass logic. (I wonder how many of the Post's editorial board they found during Bush's colonoscopy?) The editorial is largely incoherent:

There's no guarantee that Mr. Bush can agree with Congress on those points or that he will make the effort to do so. But a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible -- and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.

First, eveyone but the beltway pundits realizes that Bush is not going to agree with Congress on anything other than letting him do what he wants. If Congress caves, I'm moving to someplace where they still have a democratic government.

Second, if anyone at WaPo can remember farther back than last week, the Republicans have been accusing the Democrats in Congress of obstructionism for years. It's no more true now than it was then.

But, in this shiny new day, all the bullshit that's been going on for seven years -- if not longer -- is now Harry Reid's fault. As hilzoy points out:

If David Brooks is right, then "senior Republican senators" are planning to cast their votes on the question what to do in Iraq -- whether to try to salvage some kind of decent outcome at the cost of people's lives, or to leave now -- not on the basis of what is actually best for Iraq, or for our country, or for our troops, or for our long-term national interests, but because of "Two words: Harry Reid." According to Brooks, "they feel that Harry Reid is making it impossible" for them to break with the President.

News flash for the Senate Republicans: it is impossible for a human being to fly simply by flapping her hands, or to be in two places at once, or to be a prime number when she grows up. It is not impossible for Senators to vote against the President. It isn't even all that difficult. Senators are an extraordinarily privileged bunch. Even if they lose the next election, they can look forward to lucrative careers as lobbyists, speakers, members of boards, and so forth. At worst, they will just exchange one cushy job for another. They are not in anything like the position of a witness to a gang shooting who risks her life to come forward as a witness, or a police officer who turns in his corrupt superiors.

They are certainly not in anything like the position of the men and women their cowardice places in harm's way, or the Iraqi father whose home is flattened and his children killed when a missile goes astray, or the soldier with undiagnosed PTSD who is ordered out for his fourth deployment because our representatives were just too mad at Harry Reid to do what they thought was right.

She also has some thoughts on Republican obstructionism in general. From McClatchy:

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

And yet the press seems almost uniform in ascribing the inaction of the Senate to the Democrats. Oh, of course -- it's that liberal bias again.