Vulture Politics
Robert Novak has an interesting column in today's Washington Post. He makes a few startling revelations that indicate there will be no bipartisanship while the Democrats are in power.
When President Bush called for a bipartisan "special advisory council" of congressional leaders on the war against terrorism in his State of the Union address, he had in his pocket a rude rejection from Democratic leaders. Thank you very much, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but no thank you.
Three days earlier, Reid and Pelosi wrote a letter to the president turning down his offer (which was contained in his Jan. 10 speech on Iraq) to establish a council consisting of Democratic chairmen and ranking Republican members of the relevant committees. "We believe that Congress already has bipartisan structures in place," they said, adding: "We look forward to working with you within existing structures."
That could be the most overt snub of a presidential overture since Abraham Lincoln was told that Gen. George B. McClellan had retired for the night and could not see him. Courtesy aside, it shows that the self-confident Democratic leadership is uninterested in being cut into potentially disastrous outcomes in Iraq. It wants to function as a coordinate branch of government, not as friendly colleagues in the spirit of bipartisanship. Pelosi and several Democratic committee chairmen are leaving for Iraq on Friday.
Other members of the Democrat-controlled Congress have declared that all of the ideas Bush put forth in the State of the Union message are dead on arrival. That isn't exactly bipartisanship at its best. There are also two remarkable statements at the end of Novak's column, one from a Republican, the other from a Democrat.
The Republican, a ranking House committee member, said: "The president and his aides are irrelevant and out of touch, removed from realizing what happened in the election." A Democratic state party leader said that "Bush is in such bad shape that the result of the 2008 election is already decided." In that atmosphere, pleas for consultation go nowhere.
To point out the obvious here, those statements, taken together with Reid and Pelosi's stance, say that at least some influential politicians are simply practicing vulture politics. They offer no solutions but are simply circling waiting to pick over the administration's carcass. That is not good on either side of the aisle.
By Tom, Thursday, 25 January , 2007 @ 3:38 pm
“We believe that Congress already has bipartisan structures in place,” they said, adding: “We look forward to working with you within existing structures.”
Thats pretty clear, no? Congress is no longer the lapdog of the administration. The citizens of america made their choices in November and it wasn’t the repubs. After so many years of pushing around the dems, now you want things fair? No way. All these years a majority rule have exploded the egos of the right. You folks need to get used to an adult congress which cannot be pushed around. You want fair? I’ll give you fair. A fair impeachment trial.