Extraordinary Times

On the way into work this AM I heard the joy on NPR that “compromise had been reached, crisis had been averted”. Whenever I hear NPR happy, I’m pretty sure that something bad has happened, but in this case I’m more and more thinking that they just don’t know what happened.

They were interviewing their darling, John McCain. With the press, the quickest way to be a darling is to be a “maverick” Republican (an endearing term for “weasel”, or “Republicans acting like Democrats”). This is an area they are 100% consistent … the quickest way to be insane, a pariah, the filthiest scum alive, is to be a “maverick” Democrat (someone that a Democrat would see as a “weasel”, acting like a Republican). Zell Miller is a great example of a Democrat like that. All he did was SPEAK at a Republican convention. When McCain was being courted by Kerry as a potential Democrat VP CANIDATE, he was treated by the press as the closest thing to divine as could be found on this earth. Just one of the 1000’s of examples where press bias is completely clear.

This AM, King John was in fine form. I suspect that the biggest single element in this “compromise” is a calculation by McCain relative to his ’08 run. His MIScalculation is always that he discovers too late that it is REPUBLICANS that vote in the Republican primaries … the kind that actually believe in what the party stands for, and think that if they vote for Republicans, they will get folks that act like Republicans. Very odd concept to McCain, but he enjoys press adulation just too much to remember that when a primary isn’t actually on. He was a happy camper, and who wouldn’t be, when you get to be the main guy to pick what a suitable judge is, rather than having to have it come up to a vote for 100 guys in the Senate? You get to lead your little merry band of “moderates”, and at BEST, 14 guys hold the power. Actually, since you are their leader, and setting up for ’08, you hold the most sway. PLUS, you get some nice free press adulation for being such a super guy. It is good to be King.

However, all that really happened is that three Bush nominees that the Democrats hate, get to be voted on and nearly certainly approved. True, 2 guys that very few people have ever heard of are denied the up or down vote that every nominee has gotten in the last couple hundred years (with the exception of the LBJ stunt). That is of course a new height of partisan obstructionism, but if you are a liberal press, you just use the looking glass, and call it the other way around. Doing something that has NEVER been done (filibustering a judicial nominee that made it through committee) is “normal”, PREVENTING that new tactic, is “a threat to the Constitution, and UNPRECEDENTED”. Things look different through the looking glass.

The Democrats preserved the right to go where no minority has gone in obstructionism by promising not to go there … unless of course it is “extraordinary”. Democrats have a huge problem with words like “is”, so my faith in their understanding of “extraordinary” is quite limited. On the odd case that they mean what they say, and unless Bush does something really extraordinary, like appointing a liberal, one might fall for the idea that this deal means that they aren’t going to filibuster judicial nominees. Somehow though, I suspect that extraordinary times are ahead.