Month: December 2010

Scott Brown is going to support repeal. Steve Kornacki saw this coming. He explains further hurdles:

With Mark Kirk's swearing-in last week, Republicans now have 42 seats in the Senate, so Democrats need two GOP votes to break any filibuster (at least for the next few weeks). But if Brown is willing to buck his party, it could be a sign that the chamber's few other moderate Republicans — essentially, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and maybe Richard Lugar and the retiring George Voinovich — are willing to cross over, too. … And even if a few of those Republicans do end up voting to kill a filibuster, there's still the matter of conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin (both of whom will face reelection in GOP-friendly states in 2012) and Mark Pryor and and Blanche Lincoln; some or all of them could conceivably side with the GOP.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 8.38 am

Peter Wehner makes it:

Civility is not a synonym for lack of principles or lack of passion. They are entirely separate categories. Civility has to do with basic good manners and courtesy, the respect we owe others as fellow citizens and fellow human beings. It is both an animating spirit and a mode of discourse. It establishes limits so we don’t treat opponents as enemies. And it helps inoculate us against one of the unrelenting temptations in politics (and in life more broadly), which is to demonize and dehumanize those who hold views different from our own.

He goes on to cite Abraham Lincoln as a model.

Fallows is saddened by it:

I have been trying to think of a comparable senior public figure who, in the later stages of his or her career, narrowed rather than broadened his view of the world and his appeals to history's judgment. I'm sure there are plenty (on two minutes' reflection, I'll start with Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh), but the examples that immediately come to mind go the other way.

George C. Wallace, once a firebrand of segregation, eventually became a kind of racial-healing figure near the end of his troubled life. There was something similar in the very long and winding path of Strom Thurmond (or Robert Byrd). Or Teddy Kennedy, who sharpened the ideological edge of his rhetoric as the years went on, but who increasingly valued his ability to work with rather than against his Republican counterparts in the Senate. Barry Goldwater went through the same evolution from the opposite starting point. Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, different kinds of peaceniks by the end. We know that for humanity in general, the passing years can often make people closed-minded and embunkered in their views. But for people in public life, it seems to me, surprisingly often the later years bring an awareness of the chanciness and uncertainty of life, the folly of bitterness, the long-term advantage of a big-tent rather than a purist approach.

John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It's unnecessary, and it is sad.

Get a cot. Here's Ezra Klein describing Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley's proposal for filibuster reform:

…senators could no longer filibuster the motion to proceed to debate on the bill because that, after all, leads to less debate. They also couldn't filibuster amendments, as that also leads to less debate and consideration. The opportunity to filibuster, rather, would be at the final vote, when there is a completed piece of legislation to debate.

Once a filibuster has started, Merkley would like to see it resemble the public conception of the practice.

So rather than a private communication between members of the two parties’ leadership teams, it would actually be a floor debate — and a crowded one. The first 24 hours would need five filibustering senators to be present, the second 24 hours would require 10, and after that, the filibuster would require 20 members of the minority on the floor continuously. Meanwhile, there would have to be an ongoing debate: "If a speaker concludes (arguing either side) and there is no senator who wishes to speak, the regular order is immediately restored, debate is concluded and a simple majority vote is held according to further details established in the rules. … Americans who tune in to observe the filibuster would not see a quorum call, but would see a debate in process."

That's more like it. More drama too – which means more responsibility for creating it.

(Hat tip: Doug Mataconis)

"What could be better than giving every human being on the planet the capacity to subvert all established authorities and institutions, private or public, tyrannical or meritocratic? What would be better, I submit, is lucid self-awareness about how much our liberty depends on the existence of stable, functioning institutions to protect it against those who long to extinguish it in the name of sundry anti-liberal theological and ideological projects," – DiA.

"So what does the Corner-reading crowd think of Twitter? Do you follow? Do you think it's an advance or decline? Sometimes I wonder as I'm flirting with being a twit," – Kathryn Jean Lopez.

The commission won't get the necessary 14 votes. Ezra Klein remains upbeat:

It's hard to be confident about the prospects of a difficult package designed to address a long-term problem when you watch the difficulty Congress is having addressing the urgent expiration of a popular raft of tax cuts, but this will at least give the fiscal commission an argument to push forward: A 10-person majority that includes both Durbin and Coburn is sufficient for the package's supporters to credibly argue the commission's report deserves consideration by Congress and may indeed be the starting point for a compromise.

I wish I could be as optimistic. I'm as impressed by Coburn's fiscal consistency as I am dismayed by Paul Ryan's extremism and recklessness:

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin reiterated his opposition in a meeting with reporters on Thursday. Mr. Ryan, who will become the House Budget Committee chairman in January now that Republicans have won a majority of House seats in the midterm elections, objected that the plan would not repeal the new health care law nor replace Medicare with a voucher system for future beneficiaries.

So is this a fiscal emergency or isn't it? And here you have a real distinction between a functioning conservatism and the obstructionist utopianism of the current GOP.

The debt is obviously the most pressing issue at hand; this commission represents the best hope in a long time to tackle it. But it must, according to Ryan, be held hostage in order to repeal a health insurance reform that cuts the deficit, according to the CBO, and that was a signature campaign promise by a president elected in a landslide. The only way realistically to cut the debt now, as Bowles-Simpson recognizes, is to work from the status quo – remember when conservatism meant that, when it gave some weight to what was already established? – not to demand tearing it all up and starting over, let alone also demanding a utopian scheme for Medicare vouchers that has no chance of getting through at any point in the near future.

So let's point out the obvious: Paul Ryan is another fiscal fraud. He has much less interest in practically reducing the debt than posturing as a born-again supply-sider and base-pleaser for the Limbaugh right. He is a veneer of fake earnestness over a vandalistic opposition determined to win back power rather than address the country's urgent fiscal crisis.

A reader writes:

I will be amazed if there isn't 100% agreement that Cher deserves the award for the monumental absurdity of "Song for the Lonely". It was released in 2002, and although it doesn't directly reference 9/11 in its lyrics, it's obviously about that tragedy. Bathed in angelic light, Cher actually rebuilds the city of New York through the power of her music. Its skyscrapers are reborn to the great fanfare of working-class cops and firefighters who worship her at the end. No, this isn't hyperbole – they friggin' worship her!

This isn't a contest anymore; it's a coronation.