Thursday, March 22, 2007

Can The Dems Govern?

I am perplexed. I thought that when the Democrats took control of congress, they were going to do things differently. I guess I missed the memo on that by different, they meant weaselly ways to end the war in the Iraq theatre of the War Against Terror, passing legislation that they know President Bush will finally veto, and throwing out subpoenas faster than I take out the trash at home.
Lets take the latter first.
This non-issue about the firing of the eight United States attorneys by the justice department is trying as hard as they can to make a mountain out of a molehill. Here it is in a nutshell. The president has the right to hire and fire the 93 attorneys. They serve at the pleasure of the president. Period. They can be doing whatever and the president can say thank you for your service, and goodbye. If the Democrats want to go down this road, they better hope that they do not win the presidency while the Republicans are in control of congress for it will be a tit for tat if they keep pursuing this. It may seem that the timing was bad, but this is one of those presidential prerogatives that the Democrats will just have to live with. But, alas, they will not and this attempt to embarrass the Bush administration will go on.
Secondly, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went six-for-six in passing legislation in the first "100" hours that the majority will never make it out of the senate. The only one that has a chance, the increase in the minimum wage, will only make it after Republican senators put in tax breaks for small businesses to offset the forcible wage hike. There is really no compromise on the Democrat's part so that they can bring some Republicans along and put some pressure on President Bush. But, they do have time to host a pointless hearing featuring former Vice-President Al Gore ranting about the earth having a fever.
Most grievously, the Dems are trying to have it all ways on the Iraq theatre in the War Against Terror. They ran on ending the war in Iraq and can by simply cutting off funding. But, because they don't want to be seen as being against the troops, they will simply adopt what has been the slow-bleed strategy of setting up phony benchmarks that will be impossible to keep. At least those who have been against the war in Iraq from the beginning have some moral high ground to stand on. Those who voted for it and then turned against it are weasels, pure and simple.
The Democrats are going to have a short run in control of congress for if there are no accomplishments to take to the voters in 2008, then the results of 2006 will be seen as what they were. Public frustration with the way the Republicans were doing things and the war in Iraq dragging on.

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