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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Politicizing Legislation is Bad, Mmmkay!

Politicizing Legislation is Bad, Mmmkay!

by John Cole|  April 26, 20105:27 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.

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I generally agree with these pieces by Ezra Klein and Jon Chait that Lyndsey Graham has a reason to be pissed off if immigration is moved forward before the climate legislation. Money quote from Chait:

As for bad faith, Graham is a Republican Senator from South Carolina. His highest risk of losing his seat, by far, comes from the prospect of a conservative primary challenger. Indeed, I’d say that prospect is far from remote, and Graham is displaying an unusual willingness to risk his political future. He has little incentive to negotiate on these issues except that he believes it’s the right thing to do. So when Democrats put climate change on the backburner to take up immigration, and so so for obviously political reasons, Graham has every right to be angry. He’s risking his political life to address a vital issue, and Harry Reid is looking to save his seat.

Fair enough. And then I remember things like this:

In Sept. 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) asked President Bush to delay the vote on the Iraq war:

    “I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’”

I’m sure someone on the Morning Joe will explain to me how these are the same thing.

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Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    April 26, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    Lindsay has a right to be pissed and so do I that my electric bill goes up in the winter. It is just the way of the world, and when the electoral silly season begins as it has, it takes no prisoners and offers no quarter for the righteous. It’s tomato slinging time, and Lindsay should know that full well. It won’t really matter all that much for the dude, the tea baggers and neo confederates have his political grave already dug, even before his bold stand on climate legislation.

  2. 2.

    demkat620

    April 26, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    Silly John, legislating is only bad when Democrats do it.

  3. 3.

    Tractarian

    April 26, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    Shorter Daschle:

    I know this is urgent, but what’s with the urgency? Amirite?

  4. 4.

    licensed to kill time

    April 26, 2010 at 5:38 pm

    Blerg. I can just see that shit-eating half smile on Bush’s face and now I feel ill. I like how he had to look over at Cheney first and then totally futzed his answer anyway.

    I’m sorry, I got so stuck on that image I forgot the topic.

  5. 5.

    r€nato

    April 26, 2010 at 5:42 pm

    @licensed to kill time:

    oh, same here. I just can’t stop wishing that we had a time machine with which to go back to 2002 and show everyone how absolutely right the DFHs were going to turn out to be. Or, go back to 2000 and show the voters what they were going to get if they voted Bush/Cheney.

    In retrospect, it also seems like it was completely inevitable. The neocons were running the show. They wanted to invade Iraq in the worst possible way (all puns intended), there was a crisis (9/11), and they damned well weren’t about to waste it. There really wasn’t anything that could have stopped the war. I firmly believe that even if Dems had grown a spine, a causus belli would have been created to justify it and steamroller any effective opposition. It really seemed quite similar to The Great War, for which imperial Germany was just itching to get its war on.

  6. 6.

    Rick Massimo

    April 26, 2010 at 5:45 pm

    @licensed to kill time:

    I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it.

    Bush’s look toward Cheney was a plea for some signal of something else to say besides “Do you really not realize that you just answered your own question?”

  7. 7.

    MTiffany

    April 26, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    Oh noes! Harry Reid is playing politics to save his seat at the expense of closet-case Lindsey Graham. Boo-fucking-hoo if Graham looses. I say this as a gay man: send that treacherous little faggot packing with a golden dildo and two westuits. Good riddance.

    Lindsey Graham, the Alan Keyes of the gay community.

  8. 8.

    licensed to kill time

    April 26, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    @r€nato:

    You and me, r€nato, you and me. Oh, my kingdom for a Way Back Machine!

    @Rick Massimo:

    I doubt he had even that much in his mind.

  9. 9.

    Drive By Wisdom

    April 26, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    Our government is empty for ideas.

    If 10,000,000 illegals were offered citizenship for $50,000/head, that would bring in $500,000,000,000 in revenue. Not enough to cover The One’s health fiasco, but it could make a good dent.

    If these people can afford cell phones and SUV’s, they can afford to pay for the privilige to become a citizen. Alas, it would not be a free ride, so Democrats will not support it.

  10. 10.

    Mike Kay

    April 26, 2010 at 5:56 pm

    @r€nato:

    I just can’t stop wishing that we had a time machine with which to go back to 2002 and show everyone how absolutely right the DFHs were going to turn out to be. Or, go back to 2000 and show the voters what they were going to get if they voted Bush/Cheney.

    I don’t know. There were alot of DFH who voted for Nader. The irony is the same self-righteous hippies now carry a photo of Al Gore in their wallets.

  11. 11.

    Ash Can

    April 26, 2010 at 5:56 pm

    I have an awfully hard time being empathetic toward a member of the party that wrote the fucking book on politicizing legislation. Somebody tell Lindsey to stop crying, it’s making his mascara run.

  12. 12.

    Mike Kay

    April 26, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    @Drive By Wisdom: free ride, you mean like unpaid tax cuts and an unpaid prescription drug plan. Keep fucking that chicken.

  13. 13.

    Linda Featheringill

    April 26, 2010 at 6:02 pm

    Phil Gordon, Mayor of Phoenix, wrote a piece for WaPo.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042304469.html

    He basically said that the people who passed this immigration bill do not speak for most Arizonans.

    Mayor Gordon’s essay is interesting and worth a read.

  14. 14.

    Alan

    April 26, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    I dread visiting with anyone in my family after our government tackles immigration–climate won’t be good either. If y’all thought healthcare was bad wait till the immigration bill gets the full treatment. Frankly, the Dems would do best to bring our troops home from Germany and Japan and put them to work building a fence on the southern border. That will be the only way to make my family life less miserable.

  15. 15.

    Svensker

    April 26, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    @Drive By Wisdom:

    You have a very appropriate handle. Except for the “wisdom” part. But otherwise, spot on.

  16. 16.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    April 26, 2010 at 6:19 pm

    @r€nato:

    It really seemed quite similar to The Great War, for which imperial Germany was just itching to get its war on.

    No need to go looking so far afield for analogies, when we have the war with Mexico in 1848 (against which Lincoln spoke, and which Grant regarded as an immoral war of conquest while participating in it as a junior officer) right here in our very own backyard. Of course naked land grabs worked better back then, before IEDs were invented.

  17. 17.

    Midnight Marauder

    April 26, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    No, Lindsey Graham does not have any right to be upset with this potential “changing” of legislative priorities. Because in the real world, all Sen. Graham is upset about is that the White House is actually responding to his previous requests like he legitimately meant them.

    You know, requests like this one made in March during the middle of the health care reform fight:

    “The first casualty of the Democratic health care bill will be immigration reform. If the health care bill goes through this weekend, that will, in my view, pretty much kill any chance of immigration reform passing the Senate this year,” Graham said in a statement blast-emailed to the Washington press corps.

    What’s this?! No, it couldn’t be that Lindsey Graham wanted to bring Immigration Reform to the forefront as of only one month ago? Surely, this must be another Senator Lindsey Graham. Probably the same one who made this comment one month ago:

    Graham, less than thrilled at the notion of providing the equivalent of a book report to the headmaster in chief, said Obama’s lack of direction on immigration reform is hampering Graham’s efforts to recruit additional Republicans to the cause.
    __
    “At the end of the day, the president needs to step it up a little bit,” Graham told POLITICO on Tuesday. “One line in the State of the Union is not going to do it.”

    …What?! This cannot be! There is no way that only one month ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham was furious attempting to rally President Obama to the cause of Immigration Reform, and now that he is doing exactly that, suddenly the Senator from South Carolina has nothing but excuses and cold feet.

    I generally agree with these pieces by Ezra Klein and Jon Chait that Lyndsey Graham has a reason to be pissed off if immigration is moved forward before the climate legislation.

    Nope. Not in the real world, he doesn’t.

  18. 18.

    someguy

    April 26, 2010 at 6:23 pm

    The appropriate reaction, when a Republican stretches out a hand in friendship, is to bite it, or perhaps to stab at it if there is a sharp objection available. They cannot be trusted.

    And turnabout is fair play if the little fellow Graham gets thrown out of office. Lindsay should just go home, watch some Lifetime, have a nice chamomile tea, and get over it.

  19. 19.

    scarshapedstar

    April 26, 2010 at 6:34 pm

    Graham, less than thrilled at the notion of providing the equivalent of a book report to the headmaster in chief, said Obama’s lack of direction on immigration reform is hampering Graham’s efforts to recruit additional Republicans to the cause.

    “At the end of the day, the president needs to step it up a little bit,” Graham told POLITICO on Tuesday. “One line in the State of the Union is not going to do it.”

    -Lindsey Graham, March 10, 2010, via Digby:

    http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-what-he-needs.html

    ‘Nuff said. He is completely and utterly full of shit. Always has been. Always will be.

  20. 20.

    Grendel72

    April 26, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    Remind me again, was it Democrats who pushed immigration reform into the public spotlight again by passing flat out racist laws in Arizona?

    I don’t understand why either issue should have to wait, but when the fucking racist scum of the GOP are pushing for fucking lynch mobs I don’t think it’s particularly outrageous to suggest than maybe something needs to be done about it.

  21. 21.

    Grendel72

    April 26, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    Remind me again, was it Democrats who pushed immigration reform into the public spotlight again by passing flat out racist laws in Arizona?

    I don’t understand why either issue should have to wait, but when the fucking racist scum of the GOP are pushing for fucking lynch mobs I don’t think it’s particularly outrageous to suggest that maybe something needs to be done about it.

  22. 22.

    terry chay

    April 26, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    @Alan: The thing is, the Democrats seemed to have lost your family’s vote. Also, statistically speaking your family is already going to the polls to vote R because of Health Care, so their view has been “baked in” to the political calculus already.

    So it’s a win for the Democrats to bring up immigration (and even climate change).

    The 50+1 strategy on the Republicans is centered around choosing minority issues that are strong enough to cause people to go to the polls and vote based on them, and then agenda setting the timing of those issues to maximize the impact. The problem they’re running into is that the minority issues now (due to their own doing) have a huge amount of overlap instead of the traditional segmentation they’ve had in the past (the same people who are “pro-life” are also members of the “tea party” are the same people who want to put up a fence on the border—this was not true a decade ago). They’ve also lost the ability to set the agenda on the debate of such things as their mouthpiece (Limbaugh, FOX, etc.) are pretty much going to chase what works best for their ratings (unless the sternly worded letter from Lindsey Graham actually works!).

    This has created a situation that any issue the Democratic Party decides to tackle will face stiff opposition, but any success will actually mobilize the Democratic Party’s pace more (relatively speaking). Right now the Democratic Party looks like they feel that the backlash for the Arizona bill is so large that they’d be stupid not to capitalize on the current sentiment. My guess is they feel that if they appear “strong” on this issue now, they can lock in the social-conservative Hispanic vote for another decade (remember, Bush in 2000 did a great job of making inroads here, but by 2004, they had to put Gay Marriage amendments in the ballot for him to even compete in these states).

    It’s really hard to argue with that logic. I don’t like it, and the system appears broken when the agenda setting is done on this level. But unless you are going to take FOX News off the air or re-institute the fairness doctrine and create laws limiting for-profit enterprises in this space, I don’t see how you can expect either side, at this point, to behave other than they have been.

    Finally, the immigration reform thing broke the Republican Party unity two years ago. No reason to expect it to do anything less the second time around.

  23. 23.

    terry chay

    April 26, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    @Alan: What I’m trying to say is the fact that your family has the exact same (conservative) view on health care, immigration, and climate change speaks to a point.

    On the other side of the coin, moderates (and even some liberals) seem to have views across the spectrum on all these things (or at least differ very marketedly as to the level of action), but if the issue becomes extreme enough (like in the case of the Arizona Law), then that issue becomes large enough to motivate them to go to the polls and vote D if it looks the D puts it on top of the agenda (strike while the iron is hot).

    Most R’s would vote against any immigration reform. The problem is with the border R’s know that in the long term this will weaken the local party (like 187 did in California, like the Arizona Law most certainly do in Arizona). They have a huge incentive to break with their party on this issue. But if they do, they’ll get retaliated/primaried/defunded (how do you think the Arizona law passed in the first place) by the mechanism that is proping up the R party nationally.

  24. 24.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    April 26, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    Somewhat OT, or at best tangential to this thread: Just for the record, Arizona has a public financing law on the books for all statewide elections. So in Arizona they got a state legislature that makes a mockery of justice and criminalizes being “other” at a level we haven’t seen since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    Lindsey Graham is getting Bushwacked. By Harry Reid and Barack Hussein Obama. That is fucking priceless. Now if only President McCain would step up and lead immigration reform with his little buddy the world would be whole again.

  25. 25.

    Bill Murray

    April 26, 2010 at 7:38 pm

    @The Grand Panjandrum: But isn’t the result due at least as much to term limits, as public financing? term limits end with a bunch of legislators that don’t have a clue about legislating so they can be led around by almost strong daddy

  26. 26.

    Oscar Leroy

    April 26, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    Money quote from Chait:

    “It’s alright for Graham to act based on his desire to keep his seat, but wrong for Reid to do so”.

    There, I just saved you all 3 seconds.

  27. 27.

    Viva BrisVegas

    April 27, 2010 at 3:43 am

    By now wouldn’t the entire Republican Party believe that Graham is gay? If so, surely he is a dead man walking in the South Carolina Primary anyway and has nothing to lose at this stage.

    Or does DADT apply to the Republican Tea Party as well.

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