Captain Ed notes, , the Mukasey vote, yesterday [1]:
The Senate Judiciary Panel reported Michael Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate today, recommending confirmation [2] by an 11-8 vote. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein voted to support , as announced earlier, all but guaranteeing his confirmation on the floor of the Senate later this month. The opposition of the other Democrats transformed what had been a victory for them into another triumph for the White House:
Amid protests outside the Justice Department and opposition by key Democrats, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 Tuesday to send the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general to the full chamber for a confirmation vote.Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, two key committee Democrats who said last week they would vote for confirmation, gave him the majority vote needed to advance his nomination. Every panel Republican voted for Mukasey and every other Democrat opposed the nomination.
Feinstein, D-Calif., argued that a leaderless Justice Department is “not in the best interest of the American people or of the department itself. That’s worthy of consideration.”
Saying she believes torture is illegal, Feinstein said Mukasey should not be denied confirmation “for failing to provide an absolute answer on this one subject.”
Schumer, D-N.Y., who suggested Mukasey to the White House in the first place, countered that the nominee’s statements against waterboarding and for purging politics from the Justice Department amount to the best deal Democrats could get from the Bush administration.
And here’s where the Democrats almost literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They had pressured the White House to dump Alberto Gonzales, who gave the administration plenty of reasons to succumb. Instead of appointing Ted Olson, the apparent first choice of the White House, Schumer pushed for Mukasey as a “consensus candidate” — and won.
If the Democrats had left it at that, they could have claimed a significant victory over the White House. Instead, they engaged in a fruitless colloquy over whether waterboarding was illegal — when Congress has the power to make it explicitly illegal at any time.
[3]Hmmm.
I certainly agree that The Democrat party handed GWB a victory, here, both with Mukasey’s appointment, and with the waterboarding nonsense. In the end, there’s really nothing else to call it.
But I don’t know as I’d call their position a futile one; Clearly, given they didn’t use their legislative authority to outlaw the procedure outright, the whole thing was for show. All smoke and mirrors for the benefit of the far left. “Look, we’re standing up to Boooooshhhh”, and all that rot. In this, they can claim that they tried to stop the “torture”. It’s a thin claim, but usually with the far left, the arguments required to sell the left, are not all that convincing to the rest of us.
At the bottom line, however, this IS a victory for Mr. Bush, and yet another defeat for the Democrats, who haven’t been able to get ANYTHING right since they took over a year ago.
Michelle [4] gives us a timeline of this mess.
So does fellow Swamp Stomper Blue Crab Blvd [5] and so too, Sister Toldjah, [6] and Whizbang [7], and Riehl World View [8]
And Memeorandum, of course