Amping up his efforts to block the Senate FISA bill containing retroactive immunity for the telecom companies, Senator Chris Dodd's campaign says that he will filibuster the measure if the Dem Senate leadership tries to circumvent the hold he plans to put on the bill.
The Dodd campaign will reveal his plans to filibuster the measure in an email being sent out to supporters by the campaign's Web guru, Tim Tagaris. Election Central obtained an advance copy of the email.
The threatened filibuster, which comes a day after Dodd revealed to Election Central that he will place a hold on the bill, will place Dodd in direct confrontation with the Dem Senate leadership on a hugely contentious issue.
Dodd's filibuster threat comes in response to reports -- based on anonymous quotes from the leadership's office -- which said that Reid's aides think they can get the bill to the floor despite Dodd's hold.
And here is the video of Senator Dodd reiterating his filibuster threat:
Senator Chris Dodd played his cards rather brilliantly here. Dodd realized the disconnect between the anger of Democratic Party's liberal and progressive wing against this telecom immunity bill, and the ignorance of the top Democratic congressional leadership in trying to quietly pass this bill. By opposing the telecom immunity bill, Dodd has caused some major political shifts here. First, Dodd is generating a lot of support from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and the liberal and progressive blogs. This support could provide a boost in monetary contributions in his presidential campaign. Second, by making this opposition to the telecom immunity bill, Dodd has created a major fracture within the Democratic Party. The Democratic leadership in Congress was suppose to be an opposition party, and an opposition branch of government to provide some type of check against this disastrous Bush administration. Granted, there is not much that the Democrats can do in either passing legislation over a GOP filibuster in the Senate, or even overriding a presidential veto with the less than two-thirds majority they have in both houses of Congress. But the one area that the Democratic leadership has shown themselves to be spineless has been with the Iraq war and the domestic spying programs. The Democrats have continued to give to President Bush whatever he wanted on those two issues. They have continued to fund the Iraq war without any conditions or timetables. The Democratic congressional leadership played rubber-stamp in allowing the illegal wiretappings to continue without court orders. And now the Democratic congressional leadership has again caved to President Bush on the telecom immunity bill. My guess here is that the Democratic congressional leadership is more afraid of President (Mr 24 Percent) Bush, and the Republicans, calling them "weak" and "soft on terrorism, over having their own Democratic constituents calling them spineless. What is really interesting here is that just after Dodd announced his hold against the telecom immunity bill, both senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden have come out against the bill. Dodd's little hold against the telecom immunity bill is providing some cover for big-name Democrats to announce their own opposition to the bill. I'm thinking that if Dodd had not announced his hold, then both Obama and Biden would have kept quiet on the telecom immunity bill for the sake of their own presidential ambitions, rather than taking a personal conviction stand in opposing the bill. This is a huge problem for Reid since he could be facing an open revolt by his own party's senators who oppose this latest cave-in to the Bush White House. Of course, we won't know if such a revolt will occur until Reid attempts to place this bill on the floor, and if Dodd actually goes through his filibuster.
No comments:
Post a Comment