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My review of the 3rd volume of Robert Caro’s magnum opus The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate, is available at Amazon.com here.
Whatever you might think of Johnson as a man or of his positions, he was a master legislator , a man who could not only get things done but could understand the ins and outs of HOW things got done. Times have changed but Men have not, so if you want to understand how laws become laws this book should be read.
Some things are worth repeating. Particularly when you see stories like this:
The White House is evaluating whether to take a breather on health care or try to push for passing legislation, but is not convinced Massachusetts voters were trying to block health insurance reform by voting last week to send Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday. emphasis mine.
Oh really? Lets take the wayback machine to Aug 17th of last year:
Unless he knows about a special election that the rest of us don’t there are still only 40 Republican votes in the senate and the house has a very large democratic majority. Republicans can’t kill any bill the democrats are willing to pass.
What Mr. Carville wants is cover for his members and the ability to share the blame. If his people really believed this was the right thing to do they would do it. They want cover for this lemon, the Republicans won’t give it so he is trying to make lemonade.
Ironically 9 days later Ted Kennedy was dead and I wrote:
I think that Joe Kennedy or another one of the clan will be put in at that time, I can’t see them risking an election as the environment has never been better for a Republican.
I was wrong about Joe but righter about the environment than I knew.
At the end of August it was noted:
Anyone who thinks that blue dog house members are going to protect their seats by voting in memory of Ted Kennedy is insane…so naturally the New York Times and Washington Post will likely think so.
But the actual congressmen are not that stupid, they know their districts and can count. In 14-15 months Kennedy will still be dead, but the voters who oppose Obamacare will still be alive and voting.
Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow morning, according to three sources briefed on the decision.
Berry will become the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months but the first to announce his retirement since the party’s special election loss in Massachusetts last Tuesday.
These blue dog dems see the writing on the wall and are heading for the hills. The only reason they were able to get the votes in November was the combination of Stupak (for pro-life cover) and the argument that the bill could be amended in conference. When the initial bill passed the House the last line of my oft updated post was:
Congratulations to the Republican Party for their almost certain election victory coming in 2010.
In the Senate it took breaking rules to get the bill passed (by exactly 60 votes) before Christmas.
And yet last night on his radio show I heard Jimmy Myers say this:
Scott Brown’s election will not stop a Healthcare bill. Healthcare is not dead. Republicans passed all kinds of bills with 55 votes in the Bush years (this is a paraphrase I was driving and couldn’t write it down exactly)
Let me say it one more time:
The democrats KNOW both health care bills are Lemons that serve their own special interests groups over the people they claim to be helping. If they thought for one moment that these bills were good or the country and/or a political winner, they would have passed them and eagerly took the full credit.
If it wasn’t for their initial desire to give the president a victory it never would have managed an initial vote. Now that the president’s numbers are nosediving political survival has overridden President Obama’s needs. Anyone who thinks Nancy Pelosi is going to give up her decreasing chance to retain the speakership for this president is delusional.
As long as Republicans stay united and realize that the worm has turned and the WhiteHouse doesn’t discover my unsaid strategy this is not only going nowhere, but every day they keep this in the news they undercut themselves politically and emphasize their own impotency.
Update: Allahpundit is wrong, Gingrich should know better than this.
Update: And another one bites the dust:
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, e-mailed supporters on Monday morning to say that he will not seek his father’s Senate seat.
Barack Obama is the gift that keeps on giving…to republicans.
But don’t worry democrats; Mr. Sullivan insists you pay no attention to the failures of the man behind the teleprompter.
This is a really cynical post:
Politically this is going to be played up, international disaster relief is one of those truly bi-partisan things that the US does best and we are going to do it. The president and the Sec of State are going to get a lot of positive airtime concerning this crisis. That is not a bad thing, particularly if the relief is delivered promptly and effectively. We should be very pleased and proud that it happens. but in terms of cynicism, this is a political windfall for them both. Today on Morning Joe they are touching on this.
This will also give the media a chance to ignore some stories they don’t want to deal with, the health care back door deals, Harry Reid and Bill Clinton’s remarks, the foibles of Martha Coakley. The sec of state is unlikely going to be taking questions about her husband’s remarks and if anyone is as foolish to ask she will be able to turn it right around for dealing with something like this during a disaster.
Watch the Coakley campaign try to tie Pat Robinson to Scott Brown or press him to comment on it in the mistaken hope that any criticism of Robinson will hurt him among the right.
This also gives the president a perfect excuse not to intervene in Massachusetts, he is much too busy in the crisis.
Watch the banks and a lot of the companies who gave large unpopular bonuses throw money at the disaster relief and make sure it is publicized well.
One thing that will not get the press that it should will be how Americans will open up their wallets, slim as they are these days, to help out in Haiti. I wonder what Mr. Penn & Mr. Glover will have to say about that?
Ok that’s enough cynicism, go the the Anchoress for a good roundup and an excellent suggestion for your relief dollars.
Democrats are shocked and Angry. Bernie Sanders proposed a 700+ page amendment and Tom Colburn objected to the waving of the reading of it.
So right now on C-Span 2 the entire 700+ page Amendment is being read aloud.
To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.
I wonder how many more amendments will be offered with Colburn on the floor. I strongly suggest tuning into C-Span 2. You will hear the words amendment of the amendment quite a lot. This is actually important.
What happens in the federal code is that the origonal code gets amended in a law, rather than listing what the existing law is in the bill it say: This section is amended as follows. Often a bill is amended so many times that you have an amendment amending a bill as amended to change one or two phrases. Or something described somewhere else.
If the congressman is not familiar with the existing law, or the existing amendments then one can easily make huge changes to public law affecting millions with a sentence that is almost totally unintelligible to a person reading it.
I’d say it’s watching the sausage factory at work but as I said before that would be an insult to sausage makers like Mike Romano.
I think if the senate rules allow it, he should call for a quorum call to force all the senators to be attend said reading.
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