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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Republicans, journalists are spectators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The new Congress convened Tuesday. For Republicans, it looks like a chance to get front-row seats to the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid Show.
They’ll be a lot like journalists who cover Congress and the General Assembly: They’ll have some really good stories to tell of political intrigue, a chance to see the games up-close and to rub shoulders with those who are making law. But otherwise, they are spectators.
In the House, Democrats rewrote the rules to virtually guarantee that Republicans will be bystanders who are given limited access to the microphone and possibly C-SPAN. One rule change, approved 242-181, would prevent Republicans from attempting to block bills by directing that they be sent back to committee with instructions to add new provisions that Democratic leaders didn’t want, but some rank-and-file Democrats did. The effort mostly just succeeded in annoying Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. So they changed the rules.
A Republican reform that limited committee chairmen to three terms was also reversed.
In the Senate, Democrats may be on the verge of gaining 59 seats - if, heaven help us, the comedian Al Franken is allowed to count just the votes he needs in Minnesota. If so, Republicans there will be bystanders, too, within six months. During the honeymoon period, Democrats are not likely to run roughshod, as Reid demonstrated in declining to seat Franken over a threatened Republican filibuster until court challenges are exhausted.
Otherwise, though, Democrats do effectively have a filibuster-proof Senate. There’s always the prospect that Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins or Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter will be the 60th vote needed to prevent Republicans from filibustering legislation or nominees.
Welcome to the new world where Republicans in Washington become the equivalent of journalists. They get to be where history is being made and to observe it up-close. But except for their ability to draw attention to specific outrages, they aren’t in the game.
A photo in Wednesday’s AJC shows three members of the Georgia delegation — Nathan Deal, Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun — being sworn in. They all look grim. We know why.
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