It's the Unanimous Consent Agreement that Hurts the Most

[MrCoffee]

I can't for the life of me rationalize why Harry Reid would agree to move straight into cloture without a vote. He gave away the only bullet in the gun Senate Democrats' gun. The UC had at least two crucial effects that should have been obvious.

1) It let Senate pukes know that the Specter amendment could fail without worrying that Senate Dems would filibuster the bill without the amendment. I believe that's why the vote on the Specter amendment was the closest, and why puke Senators who supported the Specter amendment voted for the bill as a whole.

2) It was sold for nothing. What did we get in exchange for the UC? We got the privilege to put 4 amendments (I'm not counting Specter's as one of ours) on the floor, none of which had a snowballs chance of passing.

I believe that ALL of the Senate Dems are complicit in this, not just those who voted for the bill. I also believe that the only explanation put forth so far to justify abandoning the Constitution (which is what they did when they suppressed habeas) was that it would be easier for them to run if they looked "tough on terror." I question whether any Democrat who would throw the Constitution to the swine in order to run an easier campaign is, in fact, a Democrat.

ETA thanks to my fellow DU'er who pointed the UC out to me yesterday during the floor debate. I had missed it previously.