Sherrod Brown Voted For Torture??

[Leopolds Ghost]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2255518

Hmmm.

"You Hackett supporters have it all wrong. I want a REAL progressive
in the Senate, not some Johnny-come-lately who used to be a Republican!"

:eyes:

[MADem]

1. He's on the ballot. Afraid of a "cut and run" ad against him.

Look at those who voted for it--most are on the ballot, or in a state where someone is on the ballot and the stink could get tossed to the candidate.

It's fear factor.

And no way of knowing what Hackett would have done, because it's easy to be brave when you don't actually have to switch the yea or nay button and live the tactical consequences of your decision.

[razors edge]

2. I am somewhat disapointed

in the fact that for the first time I could have voted for a democrat that has a chance to win, but now I will have to leave that one blank.

[MADem]

4. Ah, you're in the "take ball, go home" line. Real helpful. NT

[razors edge]

20. no

more like the I will not vote for someone who increases the likelihood of our troops being tortured group.

[MADem]

23. Take ball, go home. Help ensure that a Democratic majority will never be

seated, and ensure the bill will never be overturned.

Heckuvajob.

[razors edge]

27. You again?

OK I'll admit I am pissed at sherod for this, I don't think he needed to do it to win. Either diebold counts them right, or they count them RIGHT.

He's got six weeks to change my mind, but if he's just going to use it as an, "I'm as strong as Dewine on defence" thing, that probably won't work.

He could promiss to bring a bill with clarification and narrowing to the law, (I assume bush had a signing statement and pen ready the moment it hit his desk) that would allow me to hold my nose for the team.

:pals:

[MADem]

29. He can't do what you want, though, until AFTER he wins--then, he can

He's got to keep this issue off the table and push other issues that the voters will easily chew and swallow.

But hey, if we get that majority, and a move is made to roll this mess back, he'll be on the "repeal" team--bet on it.

[razors edge]

30. If it's not going to come up

untill then I don't understand why he voted for it.

Dewine is already trashing him on national security on TV and siding with them won't stop that.

I see no gain if it is shelved, and very little wiggle room if it isn't, to show a difference in stance on the issue.

Looks no win to me, unless I missed something here.

[MADem]

40. RNC has way more money than we do

If you think you are seeing heavy media buys now, they'd double with new "cut and run" material.

[Justice Is Comin]

44. The bill will be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

That is the guarantee even Specter said would happen. That's why he voted for it. The Heabeas writ will never never stand. Justice O'Connor has already layed the foundation.

Put it in the bank. That brings the whole bill back.

This gives Sherrod the best of both worlds. The pukes can't get down in the mud and spread their terror slime.

For God sake, don't go in that booth without leaving your vote for Brown. He's a platinum Democrat.

[roseBudd]

37. Brown is not 30 points in front of Dewine, it's not like he's running

against Katherine Harris.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jsamuel]

3. and one of the reasons he gave was "polling"

[MADem]

5. Link would be helpful, there, NT

[jsamuel]

6. link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2249862&mesg_id=2249862

[MADem]

12. Thanks. That MSNBC article is a very pragmatic analysis.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15049251

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. You're happy to think "torture benefits Dems"?? n/t

[MADem]

21. Looking for a fight, eh? Of course not. But we didn't have the votes.

If you don't understand tactics, you'll never understand strategy.

[Eric J in MN]

34. Charles Schumer said polling, not Sherrod Brown. NT

NT

[jsamuel]

36. yeah, know that now

[mod mom]

11. "polling" doesn't work for me-not on this serious of an issue. All who

voted FOR this should be held responsible for war crimes.

[The Magistrate]

7. He Voted, Sir, As Was Necessary For His Senate Campaign

"Can't nobody here play this game?"

[MrCoffee]

8. I can understand the position the House Dems were in (to a point)

this abomination was preordained to pass the House. There was no mechanism to stop it. So Democrats in competitive races can be somewhat exonerated for voting yes. Sherrod Brown is one. Ohio is a deeply divided state, and it was a calculated move on his part to steal some of DeWine's thunder. I hate that it had to come on the back of habeas, but it's easier to see the why behind it.

I simply cannot condone the actions of the Senate. They traded away the filibuster for nothing.

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. BULL. Better to fall on ones sword before becoming a Quisling.

Torture is not a "game", SIR.

Winning a seat in the Senate for one man is not more important than
doing the right thing. A vote for this bill is a stain on his soul
and shames us all.

[MADem]

14. Tactics dissected here

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15049251

...Brown’s vote for the detainee bill made sense. In one move, Brown snatched away an issue that the Republicans might have used to tar him.

The House vote Wednesday means that there are few Democrats who offer targets to the GOP on this issue.

All but one of the House Democrats whom the Cook Political Report rates as being in close races (the “Lean Democrat” category) voted for the bill. The only Democrat in that category who voted ‘no’ was Rep. Allan Mollohan of West Virginia. .... Of the 12 Democratic senators who voted "yes," five must face voters this November.

Those five Democrats included Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who's locked in a tight race with GOP candidate Tom Kean Jr., and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who lost the Democratic primary to anti-Iraq war challenger Ned Lamont. Lieberman is now running as an independent.

On the Senate floor during the roll call, Lieberman pondered for several minutes and was one of the last senators to cast his vote. Before doing so, he had what appeared to be intense conversations with four of his Democratic colleagues who also voted for the bill, including Menendez.

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. In other words they Still Have That 1990's Loser Mentality

Because everyone knows the voters are angry at Dems and any number of close races could swing Repub! Best sell your soul to the Devil (literally) so you can win re-election! :eyes:

[MADem]

22. And then, when you win, you buy it back.

Sorry, your dramatic "take my ball and go home" attitude is completely unhelpful to the Democrats, but is EXACTLY what the GOP wants to hear. Way to support the other team, by averring that if they aren't ideologically pure enough for you, you'll withhold your precious vote.

Well, guess what--adults realize they can't always get what they want, when they want it. The horse is out of the barn, we have to do what we must to gain power and mitigate this mess. Stomping your foot and refusing to help push back the tide isn't what's needed. You may as well just step aside, because if anyone supports a "loser mentality" it's those who whiningly, threateningly, withhold their vote or run to Ralph Nader and his GOP pals hiding behind the curtain. (THERE! I'll show YOU!)

Here, chew on these remarks from someone who isn't "ideologically pure enough" for many here, but who passes muster on this specific, particular issue for you: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/speech/view/?id=1197

The cognitive dissonance is always going to be there. No candidate can be all things to all people, like it or not. Hell, Wellstone voted for the war, and he voted for DOMA. It's all horsetrading, compromise, and giving now to get later.

People who understand how the system works understand this.

[bvar22]

35. Wellstone voted AGAINST the IRW.

He was also in a tight race for his Senate seat at the time. His "advisers" from the Democratic Party insisted that voting NO would damage him in an already tight race.
He voted "NO", and in a press conference later that day told everyone that sometimes, you just have to do the RIGHT thing.

Funny Thing: The next day, Wellstone surged ahead in the polls. Seems that voters LIKE Representatives who STAND UP for Principles!

Not so funny thing: Wellstone was killed in a "small plane accident" shortly after.

[gulfcoastliberal]

38. Excellent post. I see no comeback to the facts you posted...

Wonder why? ;)

[MADem]

41. I stand corrected, it was PATRIOT ACT he voted for NT

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

28. Ya those IWR votes really kept the Dems from being put in a "box" by the

Republicans and painted as soft on terror, helping them to maintain majorit-- oh. :shrug:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

32. The "Final Passage" vote was a pure Rovian campaign-season trap. Ten

Democratic crossover votes "unsprang" that trap. Reid traded away a possible filibuster to set multiple campaign-season traps for Republicans, in votes against sunset for torture rules, Habeas Corpus, etc. This was smart ampaign-season politics.

There was only one Republican (Chafee-RI) who crossed over, while 10 Democrats did (see http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00259 ). Most of the 10 presumably wanted to ward off campaign ads on this issue during the next 38 days. But Lautenberg(D-NJ) is not running for re-election this year, is so old he may never run again, and is just as progressive as Ted Kennedy. Why did he vote for the torture bill? I believe the bill was a campaign-season trap, and Lautenberg saw the trap and helped disable it to benefit Democrats up for re-election. Now Dubya won't be able to repeat ad nauseum that he "protected the country while a solid block of Democratic whiners and obstructionists" stood in his way.

My theory is that, on his own or prompted by Minority Leader Reid, Lautenberg wanted to prevent Dubya from saying he got his bill on almost a strict party-line vote. After fighting torture all the way through to the last amendment, when passage has become inevitable, crossover voting for a horrible bill may be good politics at election time. Had this vote occurred more than two months before a crucial election, Lautenberg IMO would have voted Nay with most of Democrats, and so would most of the other 9 crossovers. Instead, Lautenberg voted with his shaky NJ colleague, Menendez, who couldn't afford to let Tom Kean Jr. campaign against him on this issue.

Reid gave up the chance of a filibuster in order to get Republicans on record voting against sunset provisions and other amendments that would have mitigated harm to the Constitution (see http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00255 and the top of http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_109_2.htm ). These roll-calls are ammo for Democrats against Republicans during the next 38 days.

[mod mom]

17. I agree with you. This comment makes me sick:

"Unlike Mike DeWine, I'm willing to stand up to my party when they're wrong."

He said the detainees "are not soldiers, not combatants representing a government, these are terrorists."

[The Magistrate]

26. Like Fire, Mr. Ghost

Hyperbole may be a useful servant, but is a damnable master. The problem with routinely employiong it is that people who do so tend to lose sight of the fact they are employing a rhetorical device, and come to view their exaggerations for effect as accurate statements of what the case actually is. Thus references to Quisling, a man who created an armed fifth column movement in open alliance with Hitler and headed a puppet government under hios aegis, which jave no sensible relation wahtever to what is being discussed here, and breathless boiler-plate about staining immortal souls and collective shame, that merely provoke sad shakes of the head in most who read them.

[Elidor]

33. Thank you!

The people who feel that political expediency trumps basic human morality make me sick. And it is not a given that a vote against this foul legislation is an automatic ticket to electoral oblivion. Even if it were, it should be clear that the invitations to this dance are printed on the devil's own stationary.

[ProgressiveFighter]

10. Yep, he's a traitor

[brentspeak]

43. Goodbye, concern troll

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Yeah, well, that other guy was DANGEROUS.

Particularly the way he unapologetically took on gay-hating members of the far religious right... you know, the people we're supposed to be "courting" :eyes:

[yurbud]

19. We need to have a big tent--big enough for Fred Phelps, David Duke...

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Right. Meanwhile, pro-choicers, atheists and gays can eat in the

"kids' tent".

Kept well out of sight!

[yurbud]

18. "cut and run" ad? Do voters in Ohio still support the war?

[roseBudd]

42. Yes as a matter of fact the most recent poll is 60% support staying

in Iraq. Sherrod Brown is not running in California.

I think Hackett would have had the military credentials to vote no. Brown does not. I want Dewine gone. Period.

[Jcrowley]

25. And much more

Among other things, the Act will:

* Strip the US courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals challenging the lawfulness or conditions of detention of anyone held in US custody as an “enemy combatant”. Judicial review of cases would be severely limited. The law would apply retroactively, and thus could result in more than 200 pending appeals filed on behalf of Guantánamo detainees being thrown out of court.

* Permit the executive to convene military commissions to try “alien unlawful enemy combatants”, as determined by the executive under a dangerously broad definition, in trials that would provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes. This would violate the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights.

* Permit the use in military commission trials of evidence extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

* Give the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences after trials that did not meet international standards.

* Permit the executive to determine who is an “enemy combatant” under any “competent tribunal” established by the executive, and endorse the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), the wholly inadequate administrative procedure that has been employed in Guantánamo to review individual detentions.

* Prohibit any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.

* Narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts that constitute "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment" banned under international law. Amnesty International believes that the USA has routinely failed to respect the human dignity of detainees in the "war on terror".

* Endorse the administration’s "war paradigm" – under which the USA has selectively applied the laws of war and rejected international human rights law. The legislation would backdate the "war on terror" to before the 11 September 2001 in order to be able to try individuals in front of military commissions for "war crimes" committed before that date.

[Extend a Hand]

39. Here is the note I sent to Sherrod Brown:

he has a speakout page email form on his website
http://www.sherrodbrown.com/speakout

Subject: HR6166 aka the torture bill

I am so disappointed in you. If you read that bill how could you possibly vote 'aye'? The last thing the torturer-in-chief needs is MORE power. If I can still bring myself to vote for you, it will be as a vote against Dewine and I'll be holding my nose.