Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Resolution
I laugh.
So today we have the spectacle of Arlen Specter, as all of us lefties predicted, caving into the right wing of his party and defending Drinky’s illegal wiretapping program.
On the floor of the Senate, pleading like the co-dependent spouse of the abusive husband just captured by the police: “Sure he broke the law! But his intentions were good…he just gets a little carried away sometimes!”
His intentions were good? Is that the defense now?
His state of mind as he broke the law is something that a jury can speculate on, Specter. You won’t even start an investigation and you’re already guessing at his motives.
Disgusting. What is worse, the monster or the apologist for the monster?
Feingold floated his censure resolution just so we could get just a little more of this: craven apologias for blatant lawbreaking.
He knows as well as we do that the resolution will never pass a republican senate that won’t even authorize an investigation. Even most democrats don’t have the spine to back the resolution they know is just the first and mildest form of reprimand the president deserves.
Congress knows that most people aren’t even really aware of the NSA wiretapping scandal, and those that are are poorly informed at best. I’ve spoken with them. Many have a vague feeling that the Patriot Act or some such allows the president to wiretap without warrants. They are uneasy about the idea, but they don’t even know what FISA is. Essentially no one has read it.
Congress also knows that what the president did and is continuing to do is unambiguously illegal. FISA is explicit. It’s been on the books for 28 years. It’s not rocket science.
So democrats know by now that republicans will block any effort to punish the president for breaking the law. They know that public support for punishing the president is uncertain because of the public ignorance.
But they also know that the more the NSA wiretapping scandal is kept in the spotlight, the more public resentment for the president’s actions will grow, as more and more people become aware of FISA and the legal limits of the president’s spying power.
Republicans also know this, and that’s why they are so desperate to sweep it under the rug. That’s why they won’t commission a special prosecutor. That’s why they won’t start their own investigation. That’s why Bill Frist wants to vote on the resolution, vote it down, and move on.
Frist also realizes that most democrats are hesitant to jump on board an issue before the public does. He knows that if there is a vote on the resolution and most democrats vote against it, they will have painted themselves into a corner. If they come back after November with more votes and try to do the same thing, republicans will excoriate them for suddenly deciding that the president did break the law.
Of course, there are defenses against this. Democrats might launch an investigation, and when the tiniest little bit of new information comes out about the NSA program the democrats could turn around and say, “New information. This changes a lot. The president must be brought to justice.”
Still, it would be a setback for democrats to be split on this issue now, because for the next seven months everyone and his brother would be on talk radio and writing in newspapers saying “Even a majority of democrats voted against a censure” etc, etc.
I applaud Feingold for doing what was right, and what was politically astute. Put the resolution out there. Let it twist in the wind a little. Let the debates continue. Keep the issue in the newspapers.
One thing democrats unfortunately share with republicans is this: they don’t have the courage of their convictions. They know what the right thing to do is. Unfortunately, they are more focused on poll numbers.
This is the ugly legacy of the DLC, of the Clintons, of every triangulator in the Democratic Party. It doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Al Gore and it didn’t work for John Kerry. If democrats try and become republican-lite they will never win because they will never be as willing to lie and enforce draconian party discipline because their base won’t allow it. As the GOP learned recently with the Dubai Ports deal, you can’t turn xenophobia off and on like a water spigot. You can’t change the beliefs of your base at will to allow you to constantly appeal to the ignorant middle.
Democrats don’t want to be whipped on the national security vote, but they don’t seem to realize that the scared subset of the population has always been lost to them anyway. Bush’s criminal incompetence was on full display by 2004 and he still won. Give up on the nationalist warmonger vote, guys. You don’t want to have to pander to them anyway.
I understand that dems want to play it really safe until November, leading in the polls and watching the GOP spectacularly self-destruct, but if you keep changing your position depending on which way the wind is blowing this month you’re going to tie yourself up in knots and expose yourself to ridicule. W has a job approval rating of 34%, for Christ’s sake: stop trying to hit him and just hit him.
It is clear that justice will not be done unless the public gets involved, something Glenn Greenwald, as usual, pointed out a week or two ago. The court cases are still pending. The more attention that gets drawn to this issue, the better. If I were Russ Feingold I would keep introducing this resolution, week after week, until it finally produced results.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:44 PM 
