Here's one thing that hasn't changed in the Obama era: Republicans are still able to come up with scare tactics that turn Senate Democrats into a terrified and incoherent bunch of mewling babies.
It's hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than the suggestion that bringing some of the terror suspects currently incarcerated in Guantanamo to high-security prisons in America will pose a threat to local communities.
It is nothing more than a bogeyman argument, easily refuted with a little common sense. (Isn't that what prisons are for?) But that's assuming you don't spend your every moment living in fear of Republican attack ads questioning your devotion to the security of the country. Or that you have a modicum of respect for the intelligence of the American public.
With Friends Like These
I have to hand it to Froomkin - he's been covering this stuff longer than I have and he can still muster up the outrage to write something like this. Me, I think I need a vacation. Either that, or some indication that the Democrats in the Senate aren't secretly sorry they can't crawl into their parents' beds at night.
Looking over the roll call of yesterday's vote on Guantanamo, I have no idea what was behind it. The usual stalwarts mostly voted for this amendment. My guess is that they were just so flummoxed by their leadership that they preferred to vote for this amendment instead of trying to get the right thing done. Or maybe they assumed we'd just deport these people back to wherever they came from.
In any event, it's a sad thing to realize that this group of people are responsible for creating our laws.
4 comments:
This is the classic case of Senate Democrats displaying battered wife syndrome. They have been beaten up so long by the Republicans and their enablers in the corporatist media that they immediately tuck into the fetal position at the first sign of faux anger by the Republicans.
Democrats in the Senate still buy into the belief that they can not be seen as weak on national defense or security issues. Thus they always fall for the scare-mongering of the Elephants. It is the same old same old where Democrats prove how craven they are by trying to prove they are not craven.
Still the answer is there at the ballot box. We need to challenge and defeat weak sister Democrats in the primaries. Pols want to get re-elected and if betraying the liberal base leads to defeat then the liberal base won't be betrayed. If progressives stand strong on matters of civil rights plus war and peace then the Democrats will too. We get the party we deserve.
Sadly, this is part of the problem. So is the fact that the defense industry and other related pressure groups have loads of money to shower on the congressmen who play ball. It's not going to change until they're more afraid of us than they are of those people, or unless we get rid of some of the weak ones.
Some Dems voted against because they wanted to see what would be done with the money before they ponied up. The rest were craven cowards. I'm sure we all know what the bigger group was.
Yes, I suspect it's not the fiscal responsibility crowd.
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