NYT Editorial: Twilight Zone Filibusters (Actually Explains What Went Down)

[kpete]

Editorial
Twilight Zone Filibusters

Published: July 19, 2007

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Republicans are doing the public a real disservice and playing an increasingly risky hand by delaying sober consideration of the war. The filibuster threat on Iraq also is part of a broader Republican tactic of demanding supermajorities on a raft of major issues in the hopes of paralyzing the Senate and then painting the Democrats as a do-nothing, marginal majority.

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.

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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.

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