Are you starting to get the feeling, like I am, that the Patriot Act renewal/reform is shaping up as another instance of the now-emblematic Mitch McConnell "bold conservative on the outside/RINO sellout on the inside" kind of caper?
In a nutshell: the Senate Majority Leader has been making a lot of noise about wanting a "clean" renewal of the Patriot Act in toto, including its "controversial" Section 215 surveillance provision that a federal court struck down recently. The House of Representatives, however, balked at such a "clean" renewal, and (barely) amended the Patriot Act to remove Section 215, with much sentiment for abolishing the Patriot Act altogether. That bill (the "USA Freedom Act") was sent over to the Senate.
Now if you're Mitch McConnell, and you want as much of the Patriot Act as possible left in place, and the handwriting is on the wall that the House is never going to renew Section 215, what do you do? Hold your ground and try to force them to restore it and pass a "clean" renewal, which has zero chance of passing, or do you take what you can get, pass the USA Freedom Act, and present a united front to a POTUS not likely to sign either one? And then embark on the task of rebuilding the case for a full Patriot Act restoration? One would think the latter, as the former is quite clearly futile brinksmanship that is most likely to blow up in the elderly Campbell's Soup kid's face.
Guess which option Mitchie The Kid selected?
- Me, twelve days ago
And now it's happened. And guess who is echoing me now?
Would you believe - and I can't believe I'm saying this - Harry (G)Reid?:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has created a "manufactured crisis" over the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, according to the Hill.
Reid blamed McConnell, not Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, for the expiration of the Patriot Act Sunday night even though Paul delayed the vote causing the law to lapse.
"It is clear that the majority leader simply didn't have a plan," Reid said in comments on the Senate floor Sunday, according to the Hill.
"I disagree with the junior senator from Kentucky, but we're not in the mess today because of the junior senator from Kentucky," Reid said, referring to Paul. "We are in the mess we are in today because of the majority leader."
McConnell wanted to pass a "clean" extension of the Patriot Act provisions. Now with the Patriot Act having lapsed, Senate Republicans look set to back the House's USA Freedom Act, which would require the NSA to request phone records from private companies, even though they voted the House bill down last week.
Dirty Harry is right - also words I never thought I would utter - Mitch McConnell royally FUBAR'd the Patriot Act renewal, just as he did the DHS/Obamnesty showdown, the CRomnibus last December, etc., etc., etc. And for the same fundamental reasons: He can't read the political wind direction and he doesn't grasp the concept of leverage. If you're a congressional caucus leader and you seek a particular outcome on a piece of legislation and it's self-evident that the votes are not there to pass it, you have to begin "whipping it good" significantly in advance by whatever horse-trading or arm-twisting means necessary to ensure that the votes will be there when final vote time comes. Otherwise, you'll arrive at the deadline, get caught with your metaphorical pants down, and have nowhere to go.
Which is precisely what has happened to Mitchie The Kid yesterday - again:
McConnell signaled his support for [the USA Freedom Act] Sunday night, a reversal from his earlier opposition to it.
"It's not ideal but, along with votes on some modest amendments that attempt to ensure the program can actually work as promised, it's now the only realistic way forward," McConnell said, according to the Associated Press.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am an unemployed hack, on the other side of the continent, sitting in my proverbial pajamas, and presented with the same set of facts as the Senate bleeping Majority Leader, I accurately forecasted this debacle two weeks ago. So how can it possibly be that Mitch McConnell didn't see this coming? Because, as Senator (G)Reid gleefully pointed out, he doesn't plan. He's never prepared. Because he quite evidently thinks that panic is a strategy. And the other side always calls his bluff. Every. Single. Time.
Mitchie The Kid is even worse at poker than Darth Queeg is.
All of the above being said, Captain Ed is probably right that the Senate will - eventually - pass the USA Freedom Act. Hell, they tried to do it last night, by a veto-proof margin of 77-17.
But guess who stood in the way?:
Eight days after blocking it, Senate Republicans have agreed to begin debate on a House bill that would overhaul the National Security Agency’s handling of American calling records while preserving other domestic surveillance provisions.
But that remarkable turnabout didn’t happen soon enough to prevent the laws governing the programs from expiring at midnight Sunday as Republican Senator Rand Paul, a presidential contender, stood in the way of extending the program, angering his GOP colleagues and frustrating intelligence and law enforcement officials.
Folks, I don't understand this. I don't. Rand Paul is getting much of what he claims to want in the USA Freedom Act: the effective end of NSA "dot-connecting," which under this bill's auspices will be immensely more difficult to do. That is a significantly "big bite" and step in what Rand thinks, insanely, is the right direction. Why would he not buy it - especially since he can't put a hold on it forever?
Well, it's getting him a ton of free publicity, though I can't fathom how any of it benefits his fanciful presidential ambitions:
Republican colleagues have taken aim at Kentucky Senator Rand Paul after he asserted his prerogative under the Senate rules to delay a final vote on the Patriot Act, forcing the controversial surveillance program to lapse at the midnight deadline Sunday night.
The criticism began a few hours before at a meeting which Paul skipped. Indiana Senator Dan Coats accused Paul of "lying" about the issue to raise money for his presidential campaign, Politico reported.
"Anything that goes against anything he believes, he never comes," Coats said in an interview. "It's always helpful if you're in there working to have your position understood, and we all learn a lot and we all try to come to a much better understanding of what we're trying to do."
"He needed to be there," Nevada Senator Dean Heller told Politico. "He really needed to be there."
Arizona Senator John McCain pointed out that Paul had missed "a number of meetings" that Republicans have held on the Patriot Act in recent weeks.
"I know what this is about — I think it's very clear – this is, to some degree, a fundraising exercise," McCain said Sunday, according to Politico. "He obviously has a higher priority for his fundraising and political ambitions than for the security of the nation."
A week ago, I didn't think it was about Paulnut fundraising. Then Rand accused his colleagues of "creating ISIS", which suggests to me that it's about a lot more than just fundraising - perhaps even "fundamentally transforming" the Republican Party into a Ronulan rump entity. Maybe even in cahoots with Dirty Harry, whom I have a great deal of difficult believing actually opposes killing off the Patriot Act, and no difficulty at all believing that he was pretending to support it just to embarrass Mitch McConnell:
"There is a way out: Pass the USA Freedom Act, which the House overwhelmingly passed with 338 votes on a totally bipartisan basis," Reid said, according to the Hill. "All we need is a few more Republican senators to vote with Democrats and the bill will pass." [emphasis added]
Rand Paul slammed this wedge into the Senate GOP caucus; Harry (G)Reid is exploiting it "liberally," including to re-position his party as the defenders of America against Islamic terror and Republicans as its traitorous accomplices. An incredible bit of propaganda jiu-jitsu on which Senator Paul obtusely (?) doubled down:
During his speech to Senate colleagues on Sunday decrying provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for the bulk collection of data, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul suggested that his opponents want a terrorist attack on the United States so they can point the finger at Paul, the Daily Caller reported.
"People here in town think I’m making a huge mistake," he said. "Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me. One of the people in the media the other day came up to me and said, 'oh, when there’s a great attack aren’t you going to feel guilty that you caused this great attack?'" [emphasis added]
Oh, you mean the same way that "some of them" supported fighting jihadism in order to "create ISIS"? The same entity that "some of them," in your estimation "want to attack the United States" - something "some of them" are trying to prevent by renewing the Patriot Act over your insulting and extremist opposition - for no other reason than to blame you for it?
Rand Paul has not only lost his mind - or was never sane in the first place (just like his pop) - he is an utter and complete honorless fool. Or, at the very least, he made the disastrous mistake of studying at the Ted Cruz School of Intra-Party Relations, majoring in demanding the ends but denying the means. Just as Senator Cruz was demanding that his fellow Pachyderms "defund" ObamaCare when they didn't have the votes to do so nor a president that would sign it, and denouncing them as the "surrender caucus" for being unable to do the impossible, so Senator Paul now claims to be "completely convinced that we can obey the Constitution, use the Fourth Amendment as intended, spirit and letter of the law, and catch terrorists" when killing the entirely constitutional Patriot Act will make that impossible by returning us to the pre-9/11 status quo ante that facilitated the 9/11 attacks in the first place.
Something that Rand may have belatedly, dimly come to realize by the buck-passing he attempted next - and he couldn't even get that right:
“I’m not going to take it anymore,” he said, referring to the NSA program. “I don’t think the American people are going to take it anymore.”
Paul has been caught in a battle with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) over how to proceed on the Patriot Act.
But Paul on Sunday blamed President Obama, not McConnell, saying “let’s be very clear why we’re here. President Obama set this program up.”
Seriously, Senator? You really, truly, genuinely expect us to believe that you're unaware that the Patriot Act was enacted in the fall of 2001, when Barack Obama was still a "present"-voting nobody in the Illinois legislature, before the dust to which the World Trade Center towers were reduced had finished settling, before the nearly three thousand American civilian corpses had finished stiffening, and the bloody lesson administered by al Qaeda had finally been learned - one that you take inordinate pride in both rejecting and tirelessly striving to undo, at our peril? Rand, you aren't that mind-numbingly ignorant - you couldn't be - and we're not as empty-headed as you clearly give us "credit" for.
And when the next devastating jihadist attack hits - and it will - we will remember Barack Obama for paving the way for its rise, and you, Senator Paul, for holding open the door.
Exit tweet:
Tonight we stopped illegal NSA bulk data collection. Contribute to celebrate this victory.
Hey, he said it, I didn't.
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