A modified version of my filibustering Republicans frustrate Democrats post appears on WatchBlog:
Last week Republicans demonstrated the absurd by being absurd.
“[T]he Senate on Wednesday launched 30 hours of uninterrupted debate on President Bush’s political nominees not making it to the federal appeals bench, setting up cots and preparing to cast blame at each other throughout the night,” the AP reported.
Finally hitting back with a filibuster of their own, Republicans have been accused of holding up work in the Senate. But Democrats have been doing precisely that for months by refusing to put to a vote four important Bush nominees to the federal bench.
Democrats claim that 168 judges have been confirmed by the Senate while only four have been held up. Republicans rightly counter that all four judges blocked by Senate Democrats just so happen to be U.S. Appeals Court nominees.
Coincidence? I think not.
Hitting them back with their own medicine is a great idea. But except for political junkies, no one got the message.
Howard Kurtz noted last Friday in The Washington Post that “[m]ost of the press dismissed the episode as more partisan wrangling.”
“The Washington Post ran a story on Page 27, the L.A. Times on Page 26,” he observed. “The New York Times ran two pieces inside the paper, and USA Today found room only for a couple of paragraphs in a piece about the filibuster and general unpleasantness on the Hill.”
So who won the partisan war? According to the general public, who cares?