Joe Conason: GOP "shocked" by Pelosi's use of "deem and pass" (they've used it over 100 times)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Healthcare Reform
GOP shocked by Dems using GOP tactics
Pelosi's plan outrages Republicans, but they used "deem and pass" well over a hundred times
Joe Conason

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/03/17/ornstein



Wednesday, Mar 17, 2010 08:30 EDT

When congressional Republicans predict ominously that Democratic deployment of a self-executing rule (or "deem-and-pass") will encourage them to engage in similar behavior someday, they forget to mention how many times they’ve already done it.

For the sake of anyone troubled by the ranting over this trivial matter, the historical record is indisputable. During the years when the Republicans controlled the House, they set records for the use of such "rarely used" maneuvers. Although their bogus sanctimony should no longer surprise anyone, the utter fraudulence of these latest outbursts has been held up to deserved ridicule by impeccably nonpartisan and even conservative sources. On the American Enterprise Institute blog, for instance, congressional expert Norm Ornstein writes:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of "deem and pass."

That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration.

[tanyev]

1. They are shocked!

[Atman]

2. I think most people are missing the point...

The GOP is "SHOCKED!" because their intended audience watches Fox New, and Fox New will only run stories which support the GOP's agenda. They are happy to brazenly lie, they will NEVER issue a retraction. I know people who watch Fox regularly, and they repeat these talking points as if they had written the script themselves. The GOP doesn't care if they're lying...they're just targeting an audience that is too stupid to know any better.

Wolfie Blitzer, Morning Schmoe and the GE-NBC clan all help fill in the blanks, just enough to allow the lies to fester and propagate.

.

[kestrel91316]

3. ".....they used "deem and pass" well over a hundred times......"

What?? Repukes being hypocritical once again????

Color me shocked. Not.

[butterfly77]

4. To Hell with the republicons...

They need their asses kicked,they have some damn nerve the hypocritical fake bastards!!!


I say its about time the Dems started kicking their asses. the republicons are just wasting time.

[gratuitous]

5. Newtie is now ranting that "deem and pass" is unconstitutional

Which I guess makes a whole lotta legislation passed when he was Speaker invalid, right?

[Canuckistanian]

6. K&R

There are some HERE that could use the education.

[Bitwit1234]

7. This is the medias fault that they can get away with saying this

because they should be the ones to inform the public that it was used at least 15 times in bush's stolen reign. And over 200 times during the rest of the republican administrations. How do people know this, if the media doesn't tell them, and of course since the republicans did it they won't.