But what happened last night highlights the potential to subvert the two-party stranglehold on these issues — through a left-right alliance that opposes the Washington insiders who rule both parties. So confident was the House GOP leadership in commanding bipartisan support that they put the Patriot Act extension up for a vote using a fast-track procedure that prohibits debate and amendments and, in return, requires 2/3 approval. But 26 of the most conservative Republicans — including several of the newly elected “Tea Party” members — joined the majority of Democratic House members in voting against the extension, and it thus fell 7 votes short. These conservative members opposed extension on the ground that more time was needed to understand whether added safeguards and oversight are needed.
It would be nice if an actual civil liberties alliance could be forged and this wouldn’t be a meaningless one-off, but as Glenn notes, the overwhelming majority of Congress still voted in favor of the Patriot Act, and when it comes up for a vote under normal rules, it will sail through the House and the Senate. And in the off-chance that something truly bizarre happens and it is defeated, you can bet your house that Obama and Holder will be out there stumping for it, telling us we desperately need it to “KEEP AMERICA SAFE.”
The people in power don’t like to give up power. It’s really that simple. Even when they are your guy and you think they are a “good guy.”
mistermix
I agree — the only thing this shows is that the GOP leadership isn’t very good at whip counts. We are all PATRIOTs now.
lllphd
hey, this is very very difficult to admit to, as the thought is so many ways is so repugnant, but …
i’ve been saying for months now that there are just way too many issues on which democrats and tea partiers click: the economy, jobs, and all that money going to the fat cats; the government getting out of our biznez (however, they don’t realize the great contradiction they straddle on that one); and keeping the government away from these powerful tyrannical platforms justified in the bush years by the war on tourism.
we could even make a case that their love for the constitution coincides with ours, with the proviso of course that they would actually need to read the damn thing to realize that connection.
at any rate, this is a good start on the triangulation of the core republican party that i was hoping might emerge. we should encourage and nurture this. in fact, i’m trying to figure out a way to meet with tea partiers to bridge the divide here in the boston area (north). they’re not numerous up here, but it would still be edifying to see how it goes.
will keep you posted; work in progress (literally and figuratively, winkwink).
cleek
sometimes, they don’t like to give power up because the political consequences of having voluntarily given up “tools” and “methods” when disaster strikes are too great. it’s not so much about securing power for power’s sake as it is about not wanting to be seen as not having done “everything possible”.
basically, we are cowards who love pinning blame so politicians have to play maximum defense, all the time.
New Yorker
Pretty much. We’re a nation that’s scared to death of “rising crime” even though crimes rates have been plummeting for over a decade now, so don’t expect rationality on the question of keeping the country safe from terrorism.
General Stuck
Scarty cat nation. What do you expect? I’m with cleek on this one.
Tsulagi
Good post. Completely agree with your take.
matoko_chan
bzzzzzt wrong!
they are almost never a “good guy”.
they are only the less bad guy.
Zifnab
@lllphd:
Unfortunately, a lot of this freedom and liberty rhetoric that goes about as far as the spending rhetoric. The moment “freedom” and “liberty” mean being nice to black people or immigrants or folks from Liberal Elitest Taxechuetts and it all goes out the window.
Stillwater
Not with cleek. Preserving or expanding power, both institutional and personal, is a primary and fundamental objective of executive branch office-holders. But it’s also the case for most (perhaps all) political reps. For a President or Governor, individual policies will be supported/rejected according to the calculus of 1) does this policy increase executive branch power?, and 2) does it increase/constrain my personal power?. Of course, for the President/Gov/elected representative, strictly political concerns factor in, since getting voted out of office, or alienating your party/constituency in congress, will curtail or eliminate your own political power.
Chyron HR
Oh, so now we’re back around to “If we pretend that Tea Partiers really believe the positions they espouse, then they’re actually progressives”? Yeah, that’s exactly how it’s played out the past two years.
FlipYrWhig
I’m with Zifnab. The “Tea Party” doesn’t give a rat’s ass about civil liberties or economic policy. The Tea Party is nothing but an outrage machine venting about how someone else, somewhere else, is getting a free ride. They don’t have policy preferences and don’t want to work with Democrats, and if you told them that what they were saying sounded like something a Democrat would say, they’d probably recoil in horror and then change their minds.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: Many people have longed for an alliance between left-libertarians and right-libertarians. Most of them eventually graduate from college.
Xecky Gilchrist
the overwhelming majority of Congress still voted in favor of the Patriot Act
Overwhelming majority is less than 2/3, noted.
Where does “vast majority” fit in? I keep wondering what all these terms mean in hard numbers.
Steve M.
More salient in this case is that Democrats who have to run in non-safe seats, starting with the president, are terrified to retreat from any national security line in the sand, for fear of being seen as traitors (and faggots).
john b
glenn seems just as pessimistic as you, john. for instance:
. . . .
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: They don’t have policy preferences
And insofar as they do, and those policies are congenial to a liberal, the reason each side advocates for the those policies is not. Teabaggers want to dismantle government, liberals want a healthy functioning government.
D. Mason
Sorry, I call bullshit on this. Anyone who will raise their hand and say “I’m runnning for President of the United States” is in it for the power.
Comrade Dread
I think the analysis here is mostly spot on.
You will be able to appeal on civil liberties issues to a small fringe of the Tea Party. Mostly the original Ron Paul followers, the paleocons, and the rest of the Old Right groups that no body in the establishment takes seriously anyway.
Another small fraction might agree with you in principle, but because you’re DFHs, will instinctively disagree with you because, “**** hippies and liberals.”
The rest will say ‘yeah, freedom’, all the while advocating building a San Diego Wall, putting land mines along the border, and throwing ‘degenerates’ in jail.
Aside from which, I would never underestimate the ways in which the entire establishment has been captured by moneyed interests who benefit from an extremely powerful central government, Federal debt, and low tax policies. Granted, long term, this is unsustainable, but with globalization, if the **** ever hits the fan here, they can migrate overseas to a tax haven.
va
Glenn has been pushing this theory that the left and right can wrap around and meet each other for years now. If he thinks that left and right ideologues, whose demands (sort of) coincide on occasional issues, can ever come together as a way of actually doing politics normally, he’s just deluded. The events that spawn ideological coherence between the left and right are so few, and the insanity they inspire (esp. from the right) is so intense, that I actually wouldn’t want to live in a world in which their cooperation constitutes a major political force.
cleek
@D. Mason:
wanting to wield the already-significant power that’s allowed by the Constitution is different than wanting to accumulate even more, quasi-constitutional / near-dictatorial, powers on top of that.
D. Mason
@cleek: Ok, point taken on that. Isn’t that the trick though? These powers *are* “constitutional” don’t you see? In the eyes of someone driven by a lust for power these are far from dictatorial, they’re perfectly legitimate tools of a leader. The only person who could have a problem with such powers is someone who imagines himself under jurisdiction of same and these folks do not.
Allan
@lllphd: If only the top of the ticket for the Ds weren’t a blackety black Kenyamuslisoshulist.
Hey, Randall Terry’s running for the Democratic nomination in 2012, perhaps Glenn and Jane can coalesce their Tea Party/DFH alliance around him?
Stillwater
@Chyron HR: Oh, so now we’re back around to “If we pretend that Tea Partiers really believe the positions they espouse, then they’re actually progressives”? Yeah, that’s exactly how it’s played out the past two years.
Or think about it the other way around. Are teabaggers supposed to believe that secretly liberals are arch-conservatives after-all? I mean, they hate liberals, don’t they?.
scav
Civil Liberties, hmmm, too much govt interference, but getting govt out of the decisions of women? Nah, the wimmin like the gheys and the muuslims and the commies and the DFH’s aren’t a really part of their oh so civil agenda. Chalk me up on the ain’t no way for a meaningful coalition side. Mahatma Gandhi and He Who Shall Not Be Godwined may have both sat down to a Veggie All-you-can-eat Buffet but that does’t mean they play on the same ball team.
Uloborus
Hmmm. Has Obama said whether or not he supports continuing the Patriot Act? If I had to guess I’d say he’s against it, but I could see it either way – and I don’t want to guess. There’s too much guessing. Everyone can project whatever they want on him, and do.
But he has a VERY high rate of following up on his proposals, so I’m wondering if he’s gone on record about this.
bkny
you can bet your house that Obama and Holder will be out there stumping for it, telling us we desperately need it to “KEEP AMERICA SAFE.”
and right on schedule, janet napolitano ooga boogaing the terrarists are gonna kill us all; we must protect the homeland! via bloomberg:
Terror Threat Highest Since Sept. 11 Attacks, Napolitano Says
By Jeff Bliss – Feb 9, 2011 Radicalized U.S. residents willing to carry out attacks with “little or no warning” have helped create one of the biggest terrorist threats in years, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said today.
“The terrorist threat to the homeland is in many ways at its most heightened state since 9/11,” she said in prepared testimony for a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington.
Triassic Sands
Even when the guy you think is a “good guy” is doing things that a good guy wouldn’t do, or at least he can’t be considered a good guy for doing them, because they’re bad guy things.
Tim
Love ya, John, but it’s kind of embarrassing when you put up posts like this claiming a revelation which many of us knew all along.
Cue name calling, abusive reply comments…
john b
he’s for extending the patriot act. at least according to everything i’ve read about the issue recently.
Uloborus
@john b:
If he’s said he’s for it, then it’ll probably pass. Congress’s will seems pretty clear on this issue. I just wanted to make sure HE said he’s for it. The last two years have been a stampede of people who are sure they know what he supports.
Whether or not he supports it, I do not support extending the patriot act and I’ll be pretty disappointed if he signs it. I’ll get over it because I love the man’s record, but it would take a damned good argument I haven’t heard yet to make that anything but a black mark.
General Stuck
@Uloborus:
He is more than just for it. He wants it extended 3 years, whereas the wingers just till December. I think many people on the left, when they hear the words Patriot Act, think of the early versions of it, that were truly evil and Stalinesque, and fully un American. Later versions, and the one in effect now is much better, albeit with some odious provisions and too loose regarding standards for search and seizure.
But the part of requiring absolute secrecy from targets has been mitigated some, at least they can consult a lawyer. It is still an unconstitutional law imo, and needs more work for protections, but was once much worse. I actually lost nights of sleep, being so pissed when it was really really awful.
And for those thinking Obama just wants this power because he likes power, please think about that some. Dick Cheney and Bush maybe fall under this label, but do you really think Obama is that into this kind of power, absent a prevailing fear that something bad happens from terrorism, and he and dems get blamed for it, for the reason they opposed this law and got it ended. It would be pol death for him and dems in general if this were to come about.
D. Mason
I wish you would stop being so racialist.
4jkb4ia
Um, read the post to the end?
I read this post first but I am reading Glenn’s post as wistful–that civil liberties can’t survive if they are the property of one party or the other because they will be decried as partisan.
(For all I know, Glenn saw this one and edited his post)
4jkb4ia
As someone who has not been following this closely, I will guess that whatever Leahy gets out of SJC is essentially the final bill and will pass.
Uloborus
@General Stuck:
Hmmm. Well, that reduces the size of the black mark. I guess next I need to find out just what exactly the current version DOES.
I dunno. I just didn’t want to take this one on face value because every damn ‘Obama is bad on civil liberties’ story proved to be wild distortions based on either unsubstantiated rumor or completely ignoring the context and usual pre-Bush standards. And then on top of that I’ve heard everyone and their mother tell me they’re SURE Obama wants to X, Y, and Z and the track record there is approaching zero.
So he officially supports the current Patriot Act, which isn’t the original nightmarish version but I might still think is pretty bad. Thank you, Stuck. I guess I do some internet research now.
General Stuck
@Uloborus:
I’m not defending Obama on this, because I think supporting this law without some fixes is bad policy, bad for the country and bad for dems in general. The fact I believe that he is doing it out of pol fear and not some personal appetite for power for power sake, only mitigates my disapproval a bit. I still say the core of all this is an intellectually lazy citizenry, and a bedwetter one. Ain’t that America.
Same with the FISA when it comes up for renewal a little later on.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@General Stuck:
.
.
I thought about it, a lot, and came to the conclusion that he likes the power and that he is a bad man.
Good call, because the worst security “lapse” in U.S. history by George Warmonger Bush ensured that he wasn’t re-elected.
And BTW, I’m glad that balloonbaggers are not demanding that those in authority do what’s right and Constitutional for its own sake.
.
.
General Stuck
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Nobody cares what you think, so knock yourself out, it’s the only decent thing to do.
Tim
@General Stuck:
Oh Stucky-Stuck, you’re always such a prima donna on BJ.
Hey, Uncle Clarence, I care what you think! :D Being told by Stuck that NOBODY at BJ cares what you think is actually a badge of honor.
Wear it proudly as do I.
Master of Karate and Friendship
Someone at Balloon Juice wrote this? Hope springs eternal.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Tim:
That’s General Stuck’s thing, though: he never, ever misses a chance to tell someone he doesn’t care what they think. Often (though not always) accompanied by a long post about exactly why he doesn’t care, and where the person in question can stick it. Because nothing says “I don’t care” like that.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
He said, after the Tea Party took a stand on civil liberties, in an area where no one gets a free ride, by clearly outlining a policy preference that required working with Democrats.
People really should read what they write before hitting “submit”.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Uloborus:
“Has Obama said whether or not he supports continuing the Patriot Act? ”
White House Wants Longer Extension of Patriot Act Than Republicans
Master of Karate and Friendship
@General Stuck:
Why shouldn’t we apply that thinking to Bush and Cheney? Do you have a video of George W Bush, at the signing of the original PATRIOT Act, rubbing his hands together and saying “power! power!!!”
Oh, well, it’s much better than Stalinism. Who couldn’t get behind that? And hey, I think everyone here at the Juice agrees that the government should have MORE power to search and seize, right?
I’m sure you did. But now that the person who wants to extend it is someone you voted for——I mean, now that it’s one iota better, you could care less if it gets extended. Now *that’s* integrity!
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Uloborus:
“every damn ‘Obama is bad on civil liberties’ story proved to be wild distortions based on either unsubstantiated rumor or completely ignoring the context and usual pre-Bush standards”
I heard a rumor that Obama hasn’t prosecuted a single Bush administration figure for violating civil liberties laws. Can anyone substantiate that? I also heard a rumor that he hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay’s black hole, that military commissions are still being used, and that executive privilege is being used to shield the White House from oversight. But I’m sure those are just rumors, right?
MGLoraine
It’s probably not a coincidence that DHS Sec. Napolitano chose this opportunity to monger a little fear about the ever-looming ultra-scary threat of terrorism:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/09/AR2011020904896.html?hpid=topnews
Please tap my phone! Read my emails! Keep me safe! For God’s sake, don’t let the “Patriot” Act lapse!
Joe Buck
Congress Matters pointed out that only 8 of 50 members of the House “Tea Party Caucus” voted against the Patriot Act extension. Glenn does good work, but he was wrong on this one.
brantl
Cleek’s right. This is the problem, no matter what happens, because in a country this big, there’s going to be at least one incident, and they don’t feel they can afford to do any “less” in any way, than the last guys. Period.