NYTimes Op/Ed: Twilight Zone - Repubs Duck Responsibility To "Come Up With An End To His Sorry War."

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/opinion/19thur1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Editorial
Twilight Zone Filibusters

Published: July 19, 2007
The nation’s anguish over the Iraq war was kept on hold in the Senate yesterday as the Republican minority maintained serial threats of filibuster to buy time for President Bush’s aimless policies. Last week, the House debated and voted along party lines for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal by next spring. But a similar measure was allowed no such decisive expression in the Senate. Instead, the G.O.P. insisted on the approval of a “supermajority” of 60 of 100 senators before putting to a vote a measure that would apply real pressure on the president to shift his disastrous course in Iraq.

Republicans have the right to filibuster under centuries-old rules that this page has long defended. It is the height of hypocrisy for this band of Republicans to use that power since only about two years ago they were ready to unilaterally ban filibusters to push through some of Mr. Bush’s most ideologically blinkered judicial nominees.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tested the opposition’s stated appetite for unhampered debate by staging an all-nighter Tuesday replete with cots and pizzas. A measure containing a withdrawal timetable failed to get the 60 votes it needed, but it did draw a 52-vote majority, including four Republicans, that amounted to more handwriting on the wall for Bush loyalists. A year ago, a nonbinding withdrawal measure drew 39 votes. The tide is shifting, even if the White House and its Republican backers won’t recognize it.

The minority leader, Mitch McConnell, notes the Democrats engaged in similar guerrilla tactics when they were in the minority. But Mr. McConnell should keep in mind that voters can tell the difference between principled resistance and political showmanship. The Democrats’ former minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, lost his seat three years ago when he was roundly attacked by the opposition for running a partisan, obstructionist minority.

The Iraq war stands apart as a watershed issue — a downward spiral that the public increasingly sees as a colossal waste of the nation’s blood and treasure. In postponing real action to September and beyond, Republicans laughed off the all-night debate as a “slumber party” of “twilight zone” theatrics by the Democrats. In fact, Bush loyalists seem trapped in the twilight zone, ducking their responsibility to represent constituents by applying credible pressure on the president to come up with an end to his sorry war.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Good! The NY Times GETS IT--at least one news organization

is spotlighting the deliberate obstruction of the people's will for political purposes.