Be prepared to hear "The Democrats are obstructing ethics reform."

[The Witch]

In case you missed it yesterday, the DP World pullout news was broken right on the Senate floor. Five minutes before a cloture vote on ethics legislation.

What the heck? you might say. What do the ports deal and lobbying reform have to do with one another? Well, Chuck Schumer had proposed an amendment to the lobbying reform killing the ports deal.

Now. Chuck Schumer had a fairly good framing idea in trying to attach the amendment on the ports to the ethics legislation. Wrap it all up in one big culture of cronyism and corruption.

But Chuck Schumer ain't no Karl Rove. And this little maneuver had Rove's sticky little fingers all over it.

In one fell swoop, Rove has:

1) made the Republicans seem like the heroes for announcing the port deal fell through; and
2) made the Democrats filibuster ethics reform legislation.

This is NOT good, and it's going to be fuel for the "Democrats are corrupt too" fire.

Can you find a single story that explains the connection between the two? Of course not. They're two separate stories. So you're going to get "Dubai ports deal killed" on page 1 and "Democrats stall ethics reform" on page 2, with no explanation. Rove is brilliant at engineering these little misunderstandings.

So what should we do?

We need to press the timing of this announcement. We need to say "Excuse me, if you're about to decide something important and some information comes in at the last minute, might you take a few extra minutes to process it?" We need to make it seem like anyone who would go ahead and vote must either a) not care about national security, or b) have known ahead of time what was going to happen.

The Republicans are careless. Or they're secretive. They're not acting like normal human beings would in a similar circumstance.

Thoughts/comments welcome.

[BuyingThyme]

1. I think the People are still primed for more blood on the ports fiasco,

so I see a lose-lose for Pukes who try to finger Schumer as the obstructionist.

In other words, at this point, the only obstruction that matters is the obstruction of laws which prohibit foreigners from controlling our ports.

Let 'em swim around in the ports for a while.

[MuseRider]

2. At what point do people

actually begin to put the pieces together and question this absurd spin? Republicans=corrupt but the Democrats are blocking ethics reform? When will they ask why and figure this out?

[zbdent]

3. When someone says that the Dems are "obstructing", ask them

"HOW????"

There's no longer a threat about a filibuster, they have no legal methods to block legislation, and the Repukes control all federal levels of Government, plus the courts . . .

So how can they honestly (:sarcasm:) claim that the Dems are obstructing the reform of Repuke lawbreakers?