cartel of defiance (noun): 1. In medieval combat, a formal declaration, delivered by herald, of a combatant's intention to fight and refusal to submit. 2. An electronic assemblage of engaged and enraged citizens. 3. An intertextual mode of reading, writing, and thinking that puts the current political, cultural, and personal moment in dialogue with text/art from the past in counterargument to the ahistorical Memory Hole into which America seems to have slipped.
1560 Sir T. Chaloner Let. 15 Jan. in Froude Hist. Eng. VI. 313 "Our professed enemies... instead of cartels of defiance, will send us solemn letters of congratulation."
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My worry, of course, is that "no" might not mean "no" for too many Senate democrats. More specifically, it seems to me that all Senators have a very vested interest in getting reelected. And while they will pour a lot of rhetorical fire power out on this nomination, it's not clear that a straight "up or down" vote -- perhaps even something like 42 or 43 against -- isn't what will serve the individual reelection needs of individual senators best, even if it doesn't necessarily serve the interests of the party as a whole -- let alone of the country.
After all, a Bush-packed Supreme court will give every Dem something to run on, or against. To raise money on, and to fire up the base. Liberal dems can say they tried their best (and release the heavy-duty rhetorical fire-power). And then the handful of moderates can draw out triangulated positions -- so-and-so broke ranks and was independent enough to confirm the nominee, or, slightly to the left, so-and-so was progressive enough to vote "no" but moderate enough to not join other dem senators ready for a fillibuster. And so you could get something like:
38 "no" plus yes-on-a-filibuster of Scalito dems
5 "no" plus no-on-a-filibuster dems
2 "yes" on Scalito dems
Giving you 55 votes, each of which is specifically tailored for giving that senator maximum talking-point, fund-raising appeal in their state.
In other words, sadly, as citizens and even people a lot of these folks might be disgusted by Bush's choice going through -- but as senators (who are almost all focused, above all, on getting the fuel for reelection) they could be very happy.
For pro-choice Republican senators, on the other hand, there's nothing particularly good on this vote. On the contrary, this seems like a "bunker-busting" nomination for Centrist republicans, which is probably one of the things that is making the 4-Horsemen, Dobson crowd so happy right now. And why we can see articles like this one in the Washington Post twenty-four hours after the nomination.
What to do about this -- other than wait for Scalito to become a talking point in the 2008 presidential election, used as so much fodder for the Democratic stump speech? (As it should be, of course, if he goes through). I don't know. Either for progressives, liberals and feminists to have to witness in excruciating detail each annoying turn of sophistry and genuflection by the moderate Republicans -- and just thinking about these folks holding (and most likely washing their hands of) veto power on this makes one's hair stand on edge -- or to hope that the democrats gain more "spine" -- but what would that mean? Probably, above all, that the Senate leadership could gain more power -- and have some way of punishing off-the-reservation dems that, 1, would resemble even slightly the way Republicans have long operated in both Houses of Congress, and, 2, would be an actual balance to those electoral-calculations that might otherwise produce a 38-5-2 split. Right now neither of these seem all too likely to actually succeed -- which is why, for all of Specter's belly-aching about attack ads and outside interest groups, I come down on the same page as this first reaction, even if I get there in a different way: protest, stab, spit and say "no!" in Thunder, because if regular citizens don't, it's not at all clear who will.
On Harry Reid's parliamentary manoeuver today, we'll have to wait and see how effective it was, but I think it bodes well for the Alito fight. It puts me in mind of Abraham Lincoln's apocryphal aside on seeing Walt Whitman walking by the White House: "Well, he looks like a man!" (OK, let's be frank. Whitman probably wrote that one himself. He knew something about seizing a megaphone when you don't have the bully pulpit.)
If winning the fight over Alito means keeping him off of the Court, then the Dems are going to lose. But if the battle allows the Democrats to stand up for their beliefs on the big stage and draw a sharp contrast with BushCo's mutant corporate/fundamentalist coalition, it could be a defining moment. The Senate Dems ought to have been doing this on the war for the past two years. Now they seem to have finally figured out a way to go after the architects of the war, thanks to their shiny Fitzmas present. We'll hear a lot of talk about how the closed session violated Senate tradition and decorum. I think it was an example of the opposition party taking the constitutional role of the Senate in relation to the executive seriously - through drastic means, yes - because of the bankruptcy of their counterparts across the aisle.
[I wanted to put this comment in as a separate post, but for some reason I've been locked out again. I feel like the proverbial red-headed stepchild, or Senator Rockefeller.]
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