WaPo: "Hastert Launches A Partisan Policy" (One-Party Rule)

[TahitiNut]

Analysis
Hastert Launches A Partisan Policy

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A01

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.

Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.

That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."

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As the good sheeple of The Fascist States of Amerika do their patriotic shopping: one-party rule is now official.

[No Mandate Here.]

1. There is a movement beginning

to see if Illinois will redistrict, a la deLay, so that Hastert and Hyde will have to run against each other in two years.

That may open an eye or two.

I would be pushing hard for this if I lived there.

[TahitiNut]

2. (sigh)

:eyes:

A thread consolidation might be nice at this point, I guess.