The Party Above All Else

Once again the so-called moderate Republicans line up and vote the party line. Brandishing the threat of a filibuster - remember when Republicans despised filibusters? back when they were the majority party, and they talked about outlawing them? remember? - they killed the no-confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales.

Now, it's true that the current president likely won't be influenced by such a vote, but it would make a statement. You'd think those who don't like Gonzales would leap at the chance to symbolically get rid of him, knowing that it's not going to happen. But no.

They chose instead to demonstrate how much they all believe in the status quo - in keeping this man in his job no matter what.

It's not that they seem to particularly like him or the job he's been doing. McConnell pretty much ignored the AG to attack Schumer; Bailey Hutchinson thought the Senate was "wasting" a "whole day" (though a vote would have been over pretty quick, seems to me); and Trent Lott figured - in the trenchant words of the NYT editorial staff "that the vote would not matter. In other words, since the president does not care what Congress thinks about the integrity of the Justice Department, it is a waste of time to tell him." No one actually stood up in the Senate and said the man was doing a good job and should be left alone. They just don't want to bring things to a head.

It should be noted that seven Republicans voted to have the vote - Arlen Specter chief among them. Those seven had harsh words for Gonzales and the destruction he has worked in the Justice Department.

For the rest ... Justice (capital letter or not) isn't - and hasn't been - their concern. As the Times put it:

As for the charge of politics, seven Republicans voted with Democrats to end debate, and many more have been critical of Mr. Gonzales. Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, stuck with his party on the vote, but told The Associated Press, “The president might decide that the current leadership remaining at D.O.J. is doing more harm than good.”

That so many Senate Republicans supported an attorney general that they cannot bring themselves to defend shows that politics is not behind the drive to force him out. It’s behind the insistence that he stay.

People like Bond are the problem as much as Gonzales is. They stand with the party no matter what it does, even if they don't like it, and expect us to sympathize with - and vote for - them in their hour of moral struggle.

But they don't vote their morals. They vote with the worst of their party, not the best.

When the election rolls around, if you don't like what's been going on, don't believe those who say they're opposed and yet line up to vote for Lott, DeLay, Bush, and the corruption of the American ideal. If they hold their nose and vote for it, they're as culpable as those who grin while they do.

Come September next, we need to put a veto-proof majority of Democrats (real Democrats, no more Joe Liebermans) into the Senate. As it stands now, they simply don't have the numbers to deliver on their promises. They have the power of the subpoena, but with one man sick and one man turning his coat - and several candidates missing votes (though McCain misses virtually every vote there is, so it balances Obama's missing a few) - they don't have the numbers. There's 49 of each party, Bernie Sanders, and Lieberman. If both the "Independents" (sorry, Bernie, you don't deserve the scare-quotes) vote Democratic, they just beat out the GOP. Just.

For instance, Monday's vote for cloture went like this: 49 Democrats - 1 (Johnson) in hospital = 48 -3 (Biden, Dodd, Obama) not voting = 45 + 1 Indepedent (Sanders) = 46 + 7 Republicans = 53. Even if the four missing had voted (Johnson arising from his hospital bed) it would have been only 57.

We need to not have to depend on hoping for more than seven Republicans to have integrity to go along with their much-hyped angst.

(And note: that all depends on fifty-seven Republicans in the House voting against a veto. If we can't get a dozen Senators, figure the )(&A(*%(*^+ odds of sixty-some (because there are always some "Democrats" who vote for the White House on this war) Representatives...