sailingaway
03-07-2013, 04:48 PM
By Walter Shapiro
The topsy-turvy scene would have been impossible to imagine when George W. Bush was in the White House.
Wednesday night was oozing into Thursday morning on the Senate floor as Rand Paul’s lone-wolf filibuster against the president’s drone program had morphed into a larger Republican crusade. In a symbolic blessing by the GOP establishment, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (up for reelection in 2014) had just appeared to affirm his solidarity with libertarian Paul, a recent foe in Kentucky Republican politics.
Suddenly, liberal Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, one of Barack Obama’s closest friends in Congress, was asking Paul for permission to interrupt his 12-hour filibuster with a question. (In the Senate, by the way, a question is a speech with a brief interrogatory at the end).
Durbin began his “question” by spending several minutes emotionally conjuring up the scene in Washington 11 years ago on September 11. The Illinois Democrat pulled out all the dramatic stops – the smoke billowing across the Potomac from the Pentagon, the panicked evacuation of the Senate, the fighter jets scrambling in the air over Washington and the fourth plane aiming for the Capitol. (Durbin’s speech begins at roughly 12 hours and 7 minutes into the C-Span tape.)
This is what Rand Paul had wrought with his Wednesday-to-Thursday talk-a-thon challenging Obama’s policy of conducting assassination from the air, even against American citizens: McConnell, who had never criticized the most extreme assertions of presidential power under Bush, was suddenly sounding skeptical about aspects of the drone program. And Durbin, who had been a ferocious critic of the Bush administration memos justifying waterboarding, was now channeling Dick Cheney as he evoked the horrors of the worst day in modern American history to put Obama’s drone policies in context.
These then-and-now contrasts during the filibuster were dramatic enough to suggest that most power players in Washington are willing to jettison their principles (such as they are) for liege-like loyalty to a president of their party. With Obama in the White House, it is now the Republicans who are the unexpected guardians of civil liberties and the Democrats who play the 9/11 card.
True believers like Rand Paul represent the rare exception. This is not to lionize the son of Ron Paul, since I vehemently disagree with most of his views on economic policy and civil rights. But the Senate is a far better place with a few legislators animated by a consistent ideology rather just political tactics.
more at link: http://news.yahoo.com/rand-paul-stand--how-the-filibustering-blusterer-made-the-senate--briefly--a-better-place-203640923.html
The topsy-turvy scene would have been impossible to imagine when George W. Bush was in the White House.
Wednesday night was oozing into Thursday morning on the Senate floor as Rand Paul’s lone-wolf filibuster against the president’s drone program had morphed into a larger Republican crusade. In a symbolic blessing by the GOP establishment, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (up for reelection in 2014) had just appeared to affirm his solidarity with libertarian Paul, a recent foe in Kentucky Republican politics.
Suddenly, liberal Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, one of Barack Obama’s closest friends in Congress, was asking Paul for permission to interrupt his 12-hour filibuster with a question. (In the Senate, by the way, a question is a speech with a brief interrogatory at the end).
Durbin began his “question” by spending several minutes emotionally conjuring up the scene in Washington 11 years ago on September 11. The Illinois Democrat pulled out all the dramatic stops – the smoke billowing across the Potomac from the Pentagon, the panicked evacuation of the Senate, the fighter jets scrambling in the air over Washington and the fourth plane aiming for the Capitol. (Durbin’s speech begins at roughly 12 hours and 7 minutes into the C-Span tape.)
This is what Rand Paul had wrought with his Wednesday-to-Thursday talk-a-thon challenging Obama’s policy of conducting assassination from the air, even against American citizens: McConnell, who had never criticized the most extreme assertions of presidential power under Bush, was suddenly sounding skeptical about aspects of the drone program. And Durbin, who had been a ferocious critic of the Bush administration memos justifying waterboarding, was now channeling Dick Cheney as he evoked the horrors of the worst day in modern American history to put Obama’s drone policies in context.
These then-and-now contrasts during the filibuster were dramatic enough to suggest that most power players in Washington are willing to jettison their principles (such as they are) for liege-like loyalty to a president of their party. With Obama in the White House, it is now the Republicans who are the unexpected guardians of civil liberties and the Democrats who play the 9/11 card.
True believers like Rand Paul represent the rare exception. This is not to lionize the son of Ron Paul, since I vehemently disagree with most of his views on economic policy and civil rights. But the Senate is a far better place with a few legislators animated by a consistent ideology rather just political tactics.
more at link: http://news.yahoo.com/rand-paul-stand--how-the-filibustering-blusterer-made-the-senate--briefly--a-better-place-203640923.html