Top GOP Senator: We Don’t Have Enough Votes To Filibuster Sotomayor
Buried in this New York Times piece about the two parties’ strategies on Sonia Sotomayor is a striking admission from John Cornyn, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee:
“We don’t have enough Republicans to filibuster even if we wanted to, which I don’t think we do,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a member of the Judiciary Committee.
This is important for a number of reasons. First, since it’s coming from the Senator whose job it is to elect more GOP Senators, the admission suggests a recognition that going after Sotomayor could damage the party’s long-term prospects for expansion. Cornyn, recall, rebuked Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich for calling Sotomayor a “racist.”
Second, it also hints at more coming tensions between expansion-minded GOP party leaders and the party’s conservative wing; Cornyn’s comments aren’t likely to sit well with the conservative groups that have launched a campaign to pressure GOP Senators to filibuster Sotomayor.
And, finally, is it a stretch to read this as a tacit admission that Al Franken is likely to be seated? Franken’s seating, of course, would put the filibuster further out of reach for the GOP, as Cornyn is predicting it will be.
The homepage of this blog is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
Greg, I’ve been wondering if the Post regrets putting you on staff. Your writing is clear, your thinking insightful and usually accurate. Not at all in the Post’s tradition of political reporting (other than Froomkin), best exemplified by “the dean.”
thx wvng. really appreciate that. I hope they don’t regret it …
so far so good.
Cornyn could well be alluding to the Maine Republican Senators, Collins and Snowe, rather than Franken. I think at least one of these two praised Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor and tried to claim credit for the nomination of a woman.
I think your last point is the key Greg. Thats about as tacit an admission you can get about Franken being seated unless as I suspect Snowe and Collins have already told them they won’t be joining a filibuster. Either way Cornyn is going to get creamed today for telling the truth.
Yes, that last paragraph is more than a stretch, its the product of a fervent imagination. The lack of votes for a filibuster has nothing to do with Franken. It simply means that at least one Republican (likely a handful) will vote for cloture.
There’s no way they have the votes to filibuster. This president so far has gotten everything he wants since day one. Had a Republican president had this much legislative or policy related success, we all would be hearing about a REVOLUTION! or about how strong and powerful the GOP is. Instead, somehow the MSM still portrays the GOP as a legitimate opposition party even though they are one of the smallest minority parties we’ve seen in a generation.
Its hard to see you outside TPM. Overall you have done an outstanding job. If the press in general was as thorough as you are, we wouldnt be in this mess that we are in now.
Cornyn is walking the razor’s edge here – he’s a wingnut’s wingnut, but he is also one of the senators from a state that an Hispanic plurality – he cannot afford to piss off the Hispanic voters of Texas; he’s up again in 2010.
Not that Cornyn would ever put his own self-interest ahead of his duty to party, but remember he is from Texas (35.5% Hispanic) — there is no way he wants to see a signature battle in which Republican Senators (within his subject matter jurisdiction, no less) attack the soon-to-be first Hispanic Justice of the US Supreme Court. Yes, everyone on this board probably realizes that Cornyn’s position is also actually best for his party, but my point is, if anyone has an incentive to buck the wingers on an issue he does on this.
nice blog post. Was really informative in general and quite much new info for me which i didin’t know before reading your post.