Dear Congresscritters:
You don’t want to attempt impeachment because you can’t get a two-thirds vote in the Senate, so why do you believe you can pass an amended version of the carte blanche you handed to the Shrubbery over the weekend? You don’t honestly think he’s going to sign a bill that reduces his power to tap your telephones do you?
Unless you can come up with two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to pass realistic legislation, you would be better off working on impeachment, because the Hedgemony has no intention of engaging in negotiations or in compromise.
You may as well get used to fact that you aren’t going to get anything done while he’s in the White House.
Y’all might be interested in this post by Susan S., a Florida progressive, My confrontation today with Sen. Bill Nelson on FISA.
8 comments
And it only requires a majority of the house to impeach. They may want to be sure that he’s not going to skate in the senate, but it’s not up to them to try the case. That’s the senate’s job.
The question is whether they believe high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed and if so, they should impeach. Otherwise they aren’t doing their jobs.
The truth is impeachment is easier than overriding a veto as you only need a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
They keep acting like the “bipartisan fairy” is going to pop into view and wave a wand and restore comity in the halls of Congress. It’s not going to happen. The Repubs are going to block everything possible to paint the Dems as do nothings.
Bipartisanship only happens when partisans aren’t paying attention. In other words, if they could just get the liberal and conservative bloggers to go away and shut up….
Bipartisanship means lets you and me screw the voters.
I may be overstating my case. I’m prone to do so on occasion, according to my wife, but I would retract it and say that some instances of bipartisanship may be genuinely good. I’m just really tired of it being treated as presumptively good.
The success of failure of any form of compromise has to based on the actual results. If the results are bad, it was a bad compromise. Compromise is a tactic, not a goal.
“Bipartisanship is sometimes a necessary tactic. It is never a philosophy of governance. Otherwise, why have two parties?” – Robert Kuttner
(Posted with full awareness that there are, at least in theory, more than two parties.)
Steve, it would be a great thing if there were, in fact, at least three viable parties in this country. Two is not enough to keep these people honest.