Senate Democrats are Cowards
21 September 2007 12:32 pm by Taylor Marsh
Yes, the Levin-Reed amendment failed. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. If you
are then you just haven’t been paying attention. Senator
Chris Dodd gets it. Enough is enough. As for the rest of Congress, they
simply cannot be bothered.
There are a couple of reasons why the Iraq war continues. Because Democrats
do not understand the Constitution, or worse. It’s that they know the Constitution
but have no courage to honor what the Founders intended. That Congress would
be a co-equal branch of the government and have the power to check a president’s
unending use of his. Frankly, if Democrats really wanted to end the war they’d
use their powers under the Constitution and cut off the funds for further excursions,
making the Republicans filibuster over and over again if the vote comes up short.
Today’s Democratic Congress doesn’t have the spine to do that job. They’re too
busy catering to wingnut talking points.
So the Democrats were forced into McConnell’s trap – vote for
the General or vote for…traitorious lefties? It was no contest, although
it was very disappointing to see stalwarts like Patrick Leahy (VT) and Byron
Dorgan (ND) vote for with the Republicans. The freshmen once thought to have
such a bright future, like Claire McCaskill (MO) and Amy Klobuchar (MN) caved,
as did my home-state duo of Ben Cardin (MD) and Barbara Mikulski (MD), along
with Jon Tester (MT). They didn’t want to be seen as voting against
the General, which is apparently preferable to driving Congressional approvals
even farther down than President Bush’s and making themselves more of
a joke. It’s too bad the new legislators are picking up bad habits so
soon. … ..Theme
Song of the Senate Democrats: “Let’s All Get Fooled Again”
It’s one reason that almost two dozen Democrats caved and helped the spineless,
chinless, manless Mitch McConnell support wingnut propaganda yesterday. Many
of our politicians are still buying the old, tired line that standing up and
finishing this war is second to posturing on a “support the troops”
amendment the day after the real support went down because of Republicans. Instead,
Democrats in Congress found it safer to prop up Republicans, even at a time
when the president is positively nuclear.
Democrats did accomplish one thing this week, however. They made Mr. Bush look
principled and that’s damn hard to do.
