Posted by: McQ on Friday, February 23, 2007 That's how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell characterized the recent spate of Democratic resolutions in the Senate (and House) during a blogger conference call today. "Hot enough for the radical left. Cool enough for the troops and none "just right.""Pretty good summation. In reality, says Sen. McConnell, these resolutions are in reaction to the ongoing presidential campaigns aimed at the Democratic primaries. In a word, 'visibility'. And that is why you have "sense of the Senate" resolutions from Feingold, Clinton, Obama, etc., etc. Some are tiring of the toothless nature of what they've been attempting for the last month so they're trying to pass binding resolutions instead. The latest in that genre is the Levin amendment which is an attempt to rewrite the AUMF and prohibit troop deployments. It isn't going anywhere in the Senate and Levin knows it. Why? Because the amendment will require 60 votes to pass. That means Levin has to get 12 Republicans to vote with the Democrats (assuming Joe Lieberman votes with the Reps and Sen Johnson doesn't vote due to incapacitation). No way will that happen. And Levin, Schumer, et al, know that it isn't going to happen. But attempting it, even in the face of sure defeat, puts them on record as having 'tried' (something the Republicans never seemed to understand when they were in the majority). While they all know they haven't a chance to pass these resolutions, their attempts to do so will help insulate them from charges from among members of the anti-war left that they really didn't try to stop the war. McConnell opposes those and other resolutions which limit the ability of the President to manage the war on the grounds that doing so is outside the Constitutional power of Congress. He says it is within the power of Congress to fund or defund a war, but not to micro-manage it. He contends that the current crop of proposed resolutions, like the Levin amendment, engage in micro-management. McConnell says if the Democrats are serious and principled about their opposition to this war, they'll introduce legislation to defund it, and not these backdoor methods they're persistently attempting. When asked what effect a Lieberman switch to the Republican party might have on the Senate, McConnell said that first it was highly unlikely that would happen, but if it did, the majority would belong to the Republicans and that committee chairs would switch. He said that reports that claimed nothing would change are inaccurate. |
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