There's reason to hope that the Republicans are cracking up. Barbara Boxer thinks so. I talked to her a few days ago in Washington--on the day the Republican leadership rejected Harry Reid's compromise to end the Senate filibuster standoff. It was "a perfectly reasonable compromise," said Senator Boxer, the combative hero of the left who is also friends with Senator Reid, the deal-making, pro-life leader of the Senate Democrats. Now, Boxer said, people are beginning to see how extreme the Republicans really are.Since then there's been a lot of speculation about what is really going on in Senate back rooms. Was the deal Reid offered craftily designed to fail, and thus make the Republicans look stubborn and unreasonable? Or were the Democrats giving away the store--offering to confirm rightwing judges they had previously rejected, and even promising not to filibuster a Bush Supreme Court nominee?
Unless you are inside you don't know.
But if the Democrats have not perfectly coordinated their strategy--swinging back and forth between compromise and combativeness--the Republicans may be giving them a helping hand. Terri Schiavo, Tom DeLay, and Republican majority leader Bill Frist's rhetoric of religious war are not playing well with the public. Social Security reform is meeting a lot of skepticism. Lately, in an effort to change the topic, the Rs dragged out a new piece of parental consent legislation that would make criminals of grandmothers and aunts who helped teenagers get abortions by crossing state lines. Frist says it's at the top of his list of priorities. But this sort of intrusive government intervention didn't sell in the Schiavo case. Outside the rabid religious right base, it may be wearing thin.
We still don't know how the filibuster standoff will end. Will it be another Newt Gingrich government shutdown story--with the President looking good in the end? Or will the public look at DeLay's ethics rule changes, Frist's comments about Democrats being anti-Christian, and the rest of the excessively aggressive Republican team and fix blame on the overstepping Republicans in Congress? Judging from the gleam in Boxer's eye, I'd say it's looking like the latter option.
Meanwhile, more power to the Princeton students who are filibustering day and night outside Bill Frist's family's legacy building on campus. What the Democrats need now is a show of support from the rest of the public for standing firm and seizing the opening the Republicans are giving them.
Ruth Conniff is Political Editor of The Progressive.
© 2005 The Progressive
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