Mitch Slapped Twice in One Night
Spree's post is entitled:
Senate Votes 94-3: Gitmo Terrorists NOT to be brought onto U.S. Soil
Now, we all know that something would HAVE to be askew, NAY!, amiss for 94 Senators voting this way. What happened?
The particular article that has the trolls and moonbats all atwitter is entitled:
The night Mitch McConnell became the leader of the Republican Party.
LOL! Man! Hugh Hewitt sure knows how to turn the screws!!
A remarkable thing happened in the United States Senate earlier this evening, and it occurred over a rather unremarkable piece of legislation that was being debated. Conservatives, frustrated at the lack of a genuine leader of their party, may have finally found one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.
After Democratic leader Harry Reid’s MoveOn.org all-night session Tuesday night, a move that resulted only in helping unify the weak-kneed Republicans who were peeling away from continued support of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, McConnell, the Republican leader, served notice to anyone watching C-SPAN that he now runs the Senate.
And Reid seethes. Good. Couldn't have happened to a worse person.
I was sort of watching CSPAN and Byrd needs to retire or get dried out. I was thinking that Byrd was droning on so about the plight of fight dogs with an angst that should be applied to the barbarity of the terrorist enemies we are doing battle with and, that he was just boring the HELL out of everybody. Kind of odd to be yammering on about dogs when the bill before them was for Student Loans and such. While he was yammering and boring everyone:
...McConnell and the Republicans decided to take control of the Senate. The Republicans offered amendment after amendment to the bill, catching the Democrats flat-footed.
After a couple of Republican amendments failed, Mitch McConnell took to the floor and offered his own amendment, which was a Sense of the Senate that Guantanamo detainees not be allowed released or moved to U.S. soil. To conservatives, this obviously makes sense. To liberals, especially California’s Dianne Feinstein, one of the chief proponents of the effort to close the detention center at Gitmo and relocate these detainees into the American justice system, especially when tagged onto a student loan and grant bill, you’d think this measure would go down in flames. Except a funny thing happened. The bill was titled in a way that you had to vote yes to vote no, and no to vote yes. The final vote was 94-3, officially putting the Senate on record as saying terrorist detainees shouldn’t be moved to the U.S. Before the Democrats, who clearly hadn’t read the amendment, realized they screwed up, the vote was recorded.
So much for the self-professed Best of the Best! Reid was snookered!! I guess that is why his approval rating is in the cesspools of DC.
Teddy (hic)(hic) Kennedy went on a rant and the audio is here. Poor Leftinistra. LOL!!
Once the rant was over, Kennedy threw the Senate into a quorum call so that the Democrats could regroup. The session progressed well into the night, and McConnell could easily have rested on his laurels, but he wasn’t finished. Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar offered his own irrelevant amendment, asking for a sense of the Senate that President Bush not pardon Scooter Libby. McConnell, with that wry smile he offers when he’s up to something, countered with a secondary amendment to Salazar’s, saying that if it’s fair to bring up the Senate’s view of potential future inappropriate pardons, maybe we should also have a sense of the Senate of past inappropriate pardons, and proceeded to maneuver the Senate clerk into reading off the laundry list of Clinton administration pardons, including those of Marc Rich and others, which again set the Democrats off in a tailspin. After throwing the Senate back into a quorum call for half an hour, the beleaguered Harry Reid came out and pulled the Salazar amendment off the floor. He’d been Mitchslapped twice in one night.
90-Proof went on another tear! (the text is also available)
Senator Kennedy isn’t angry at Republicans tonight anyway. Any conservative who watched the debate in the evening recognizes the frustration in him. It’s the same frustration conservatives had between 2005 and the beginning of this year when Bill Frist, the affable but ineffective Republican majority leader, consistently mismanaged the Senate. Ted Kennedy is angry at Harry Reid, because in seven short months, Mitch McConnell has run rings around him on issues from Iraq to immigration, and tonight, he just flat-out schooled Reid on how the Senate works, as if to say to Reid you messed with us two nights ago on a PR stunt for your fringe base, here’s how things like that can be answered.
Reid is out of his league. He was confident that the Silent Majority would remain silent and we are not and OUR elected officials have heard us loud and clear.
The Senate surely has made the base nervous at best and disgusted at worst in the seven months of the McConnell tenure. But if you look at the stats, when all is said and done, when the base needed him, he’s been there. He successfully kept the Republicans in line on multiple time certain withdrawal resolutions in the Senate, skillfully allowed the immigration bill to die while at least giving it a chance to be debated, and tonight showed the ability that he has no reservations about going toe to toe with Harry Reid and beating him repeatedly. It’s time conservatives use the old Reagan adage, trust but verify, and continue to support and encourage Mitch McConnell, and work to add to his numbers in the Senate next November.
Aye, Cap'n. Aye!
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