When Up Is Down

Several days ago I noted that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had agreed to a four-year extension of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act -- a bill Democrats everywhere once claimed to revile -- without a single reform (despite the long and documented history of its abuse and despite Obama's previously claimed desire to reform it). Tonight, a cloture vote was taken in the Senate on the four-year extension and it passed by a vote of 74-8. The law that was once the symbolic shorthand for evil Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism just received a vote in favor of its four-year, reform-free extension by a vote of 74-8: only resolutions to support Israel command more lopsided majorities.

As I've noted several times, I once thought that the greatest American political myth was "The Liberal Media," but I realized some time ago that it's actually the claim that "there is very little bipartisanship." Washington is driven by overwhelming amounts of bipartisanship, as today's vote (and the Reid/McConnell agreement that preceded it) yet again demonstrates. The 8 Senators voting against cloture were Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democrats Jeff Merkley, Mark Begich, Max Baucus, and John Tester, and GOP Senators Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Dean Heller (GOP Sen. Mike Lee announced he'd vote NO but missed the vote due to inclement weather). Sen. Paul, along with Sen. Tester, took the lead in speaking out against the excesses and abuses of the Patriot Act and the vital need for reforms.

But what's most notable isn't the vote itself, but the comments made afterward. Sen. Paul announced that he was considering using delaying tactics to hold up passage of the bill in order to extract some reforms (including ones he is co-sponsoring with the Democrats' Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Leahy, who -- despite voicing "concerns" about the bill -- voted for cloture). Paul's announcement of his delaying intentions provoked this fear-mongering, Terrorism-exploiting, bullying threat from the Democrats' Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Dianne Feinstein:

"I think it would be a huge mistake," Feinstein told reporters. "If somebody wants to take on their shoulders not having provisions in place which are necessary to protect the United States at this time, that’s a big, big weight to bear."

In other words: Paul and the other dissenting Senators better give up their objections and submit to quick Patriot Act passage or else they'll have blood on their hands from the Terrorist attack they will cause. That, of course, was the classic Bush/Cheney tactic for years to pressure Democrats into supporting every civil-liberties-destroying measure the Bush White House demanded (including, of course, the original Patriot Act itself), and now we have the Democrats -- ensconced in power -- using it just as brazenly and shamelessly (recall how Bush's DNI, Michael McConnell, warned Congressional Democrats in 2007 that unless they quickly passed without changes the new FISA bill the Bush White House was demanding, a Terrorist attack would likely occur at the Congress in a matter of "days, not weeks"; McConnell then told The New Yorker: "If we don’t update FISA, the nation is significantly at risk"). Feinstein learned well.
~ from The Patriot Act and Bipartisanship by Glenn Greenwald ~

This same scenario has played out again and again during the Obama presidency. On issues that the Democrats once vociferously argued against, they now embrace with both arms. On policies in which candidate Obama said he would change dramatically from his predecessor, he has stayed the course and, in some instances, expanded.

This notion that the Democrats are substantively different than the GOP on MOST issues is a farce.