June 17, 2009

6/17: The Supplemental Fight

Bloggers on both sides of the political divide were disappointed that the House narrowly passed the $106B supplemental bill yesterday. As we've noted previously, this unlikely alliance of liberal and conservative bloggers had been furiously lobbying against the bill's passage. Righty bloggers were primarily opposed to the IMF funding, while lefty bloggers were primarily opposed to the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (although some of them were opposed to the IMF funding as well).

While lefty and righty bloggers had different reasons for opposing this bill, they both believe that Dems will pay a political price for passing it. Liberals are declaring that "it's the Democrats' war now," while conservatives are warning Blue Dog Dems that they'll have to defend their decision to use U.S. tax dollars to "prop up Iran and European banks." On the other hand, many netroots bloggers are arguing that House GOPers are hypocrites for voting against the bill en masse. Markos Moulitsas writes: "I wonder what ever happened to 'voting against war supplementals is voting against the troops'? It was always bullshit, of course, but now that Republicans oppose the supplemental, that media theme appears quite dead. Hmmmm...."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Sudbay, Morrill, Singer, Eli, Kleiman, Willis) are calling Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) a moral hypocrite now that he's admitted to having an extramarital affair with a former campaign staffer. On the right side of the blogosphere, Michelle Malkin calls Ensign "a wretched dog" while Dan Riehl defends him.
• Conservative bloggers (Morrissey, Hewitt, Leibsohn, Lowry, Johnson) continue to criticize Pres. Obama's statements about the situation in Iran, while liberal bloggers (Drum, Yglesias, Ackerman, hilzoy, Heilbrunn) are defending Obama's approach. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are pleased that Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has introduced a resolution "expressing support" for the Iranian dissidents, while liberal bloggers call this resolution "counterproductive."
• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, Aravosis, Orton, Ruby-Sachs, Spaulding) are not impressed by Obama's decision to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees -- a decision that came as Obama faced criticism from gay rights leaders over his admin.'s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Reynolds, Allahpundit, Riehl, McCain) are complaining about the news (which was promoted by Matt Drudge) that ABC News will air a prime-time White House interview with Obama on health care issues.
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Hillyer, Morrissey, Hengler, Hinderaker) continue to accuse Obama of firing inspector general Gerald Walpin for corrupt reasons.

SUPPLEMENTAL BILL: So Close, Yet So Far...

Liberal bloggers were disappointed that the House voted to approve the $106B bill:

• digby: "It's the Democrats' war now. And they're congratulating themselves for it. That whole Vietnam thing evidently didn't really make an impression ... Still, kudos to FDL, Democrats.com and After Downing Street and all the others for their hard work trying to remind the Democrats why they won the last two elections."
• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "218 votes for war funding. Yeah. It's a Democratic war now."

Open Left's Chris Bowers looks on the bright side: "Given what was at stake -- increasing Progressive influence and ending the Washington Consensus -- this is definitely disappointing. However, it is still impressive how close this effort came, that the Democratic leadership was delayed for as long as they were, and that President Obama had to eventually start whipping votes himself. While the desired outcome did not take place, this is still an advance for Progressive Caucus influence, and a sign that they are a force to be reckoned with."

Conservative bloggers who opposed the bill were primarily upset about the provision appropriating money to the IMF:

• Michelle Malkin: "Is there any bill that can pass on Capitol Hill these days without a multi-billion-dollar bailout attached to it? Nope. The Beltway politicians can't even keep the war-funding bill free of taxpayer handouts to failing enterprises."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Bad News: H.R. 2346, the supplemental, passed. [...] Better News: By the time it came to a vote, there was no doubt left that the IMF will use the money to prop up Iran and European banks. That means some Blue Dog Democrats just got big old targets on their backs and now we must concentrate our political fire on them."

SUPPLEMENTAL BILL II: Now It's The GOP's Turn To Vote Against The Troops

Liberal bloggers are calling House GOPers hypocrites for opposing a bill the provides funding for the troops, even though the GOP has historically "portrayed the bills funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as matters of national security and accused Democrats who voted against them of voting against the troops":

• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "I wonder what ever happened to 'voting against war supplementals is voting against the troops'? It was always bullshit, of course, but now that Republicans oppose the supplemental, that media theme appears quite dead. Hmmmm...."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "We can all recall the days when voting against an emergency war supplemental bill was the most evil and un-American thing ever."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Reasonable people can certainly disagree with elements of the $106 billion war supplemental spending bill, but the hypocrisy by the Republican Party on this is stunning, even for them. [...] For eight years, with supplemental after supplemental, the GOP position was that voting against funding was voting against the troops. And so today, the Republicans plan to vote against the troops."

While some liberal bloggers were opposed to the IMF funding, others think this was a foolish reason for House GOPers to vote against the bill:

• Yglesias: "Beyond the pure hypocrisy play, it's worth observing that this is a really bad reason to vote against the bill. Nina Hachigian did a brief piece for CAP about this but suffice it to say that the world economy continues to be in a very perilous situation. It now looks like things might start getting better. But it's possible that some 'other shoe' or two may drop -- most likely the meltdown of an Eastern European country -- and the IMF exists to stop that kind of thing from happening. As with TARP, the net fiscal cost is likely to be dramatically lower than the headline appropriation (because money gets repaid) and the macroeconomic impact of collapses is much more severe than the cost of ponying up the money."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Hypocrisy is overrated as a vice, but this is still pretty stunning. I mean, they're doing this over $5 billion in net IMF contributions to help out with the global financial meltdown? Seriously? That's about .1% of the federal budget, and one of these days it might help prevent a collapse that spreads across the ocean and sends Wall Street into yet another tailspin. That's what Republicans are going to the mat for these days? Crikey."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Ensign Fallout

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver offers his thoughts on Ensign's admission that he had an extramarital affair with a former campaign staffer:

"It seems unlikely...that Ensign will resign [...]. Although Nevada's governor is a Republican and could appoint another Republican to replace him, that would nevertheless trigger a special election in 2010, when Democratic incumbent Harry Reid is also on the ballot. Nevada Republicans have a very poor bench right now and are already having trouble recruiting a credible candidate to run against the unpopular Reid. They might have a lot of difficulty retaining Ensign's seat in the event of a special election, or alternatively, might compete for it at the price of giving Reid a free pass.

Remember, senators don't have to govern, or to preside over any legislature. They don't have any particular use for political capital, and other than their ability to be re-elected, they don't have any particular reason to popular. That's why [ex-NY Gov.] Eliot Spitzer resigned and [LA Sen.] David Vitter (whom many Louisanans seem to have forgiven) didn't. It's why [IL Sen.] Roland Burris is still in the Senate.

Still, whether Ensign runs for re-election or not, this certainly would seem to give the Democrats a leg up on the seat in 2012, a cycle in which they'll have few other opportunities to play offense as they try to defend the gains they made in 2006. And Ensign's is a valuable seat at that: only one state more Democratic than Nevada currently has a Republican senator. That's Maine, which has two of them. But whereas Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are moderates, Ensign is a staunch conservative who chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee."

LEST WE FORGET: The Palin-Letterman Dust-Up

Wonkette's Jim Newell:

"Christ, it's not like there's any election going on, when this public celebrity nonsense sometimes can matter, for a few hours, but here we are finally getting all intrigued-like over some snit on Todd & Sarah Palin's Facebook page about a baseball sex joke David Letterman made on television one night. What's going on now. Letterman apologized again last night for making whatever joke, a monologue quickie, that Sarah Palin pretended to interpret as pervert code for 'I'm gonna rape your 14-year-old Willow daughter.' Now Palin has 'accepted' Letterman's lengthy apology with one of the more obnoxious statements in her endless, vapid, snarling canon. Read this a couple of times:

'Letterman certainly has the right to "joke" about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,' Palin said. 'This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America's Right to Free Speech -- in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.'

Yeah that's right, the military. She weaves the military into her apology acceptance. Perhaps only once in a generation can a trashy politician stretch ambition and shamelessness into this large a surface, a playing field, on which to act like an idiot. Here she has thanked the United States Military, the fine folks fighting the Taliban and stuff in various Middle East wars, for achieving its 'real' overseas goal, which was to 'secure' part of the First Amendment from the terrorists -- one of them was keeping the little scrap of paper in his pocket -- so that David Letterman and Sarah Palin could legally bicker about baseball sex jokes on teevee and Facebook for a couple of weeks."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at June 17, 2009 01:04 PM