It’s unlikely that the promised fillibuster — Democrats setting up a scenario by which the Republicans will either have to fillibuster the war or give in and allow a straight vote — will result in any meaningful change in Iraq. But it is heartening to see that the Democrats have finally come to read the tea leaves correctly and are ready to make it clear that this is a Republican war and that it is the GOP that is standing in the way of bringing the troops home.
John Nichols in his blog on The Nation’s Web site offers this take:
With a quarter of the term of the current Congress now done, it is clear that the cooperative approach adopted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Senate Majority Leader Reid, D-Nevada, hasn’t worked. It is not just that approval ratings for Congress are now below those of a failed president that Democrats were elected to challenge and constrain. It is that the disastrous war in Iraq, the central crisis of this American moment, continues to claim the lives of US troops and Iraqi civilians at an alarming rate.
The circumstance requires that Congressional Democrats change course. And their new priority should be to clarify rather than muddy the debate over Iraq.
That is what Reid is doing, at least tentatively, with his decision to, as he puts it, “highlight Republican obstruction” of Democratic efforts to bring the troops home.
Reid plans to do that Tuesday by refusing to allow Republicans to quietly make procedural moves to block voting on an amendment sponsored by Michigan Senator Carl Levin and Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed that would establish a withdrawal timeline. Instead, he plans to force the President’s Senate allies to filibuster–at least for one night–in favor of continuing a war that even Republicans do not want to be associated with anymore.
“I would like to inform the Republican leadership and all my colleagues that we have no intention of backing down,” Reid declared Monday afternoon. “If Republicans do not allow a vote on Levin/Reed today or tomorrow, we will work straight through the night on Tuesday. The American people deserve an open and honest debate on this war, and they deserve an up or down vote on this amendment to end it.”
Unless Republicans agree to a simple-majority vote on Levin-Reed, Reid has indicated that he will keep the Senate in continuous session through Tuesday night and into Wednesday. The point is to make it absolutely clear that Republican senators–even those who say they want to start bringing the troops home–are doing everything in their power to prevent a Senate vote that might embarrass of challenge Bush.
It is not likely that one night of filibustering complete the process of exposing the Republican shenanigans for what they are.
But Reid’s move is a step in the right direction.
It’s about time.
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Hank Kalet 