Monday, April 25, 2005
Frist Says Dems Coined "Nuclear Option"...He's Lying...
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is charging hard to become the darling of religious right chickletbrains long before the 2008 GOP presidential primary season.
He's trying so hard, in fact, he's resorting to telling out-an-out lies about the origin of the phrase "nuclear option". I'm assuming the phrase must've polled badly (much like "private accounts"), and since the GOP can't take a shit without checking a poll nowadays, their trying to turn "nuclear option" into a creation of the Democratic party..
Wrong...
Here's what the catkiller said yesterday:
Now if Senator Reid continues to obstruct the process, we will consider what opponents call the “nuclear option.” Only in the United States Senate could it be considered a devastating option to allow a vote. Most places call that democracy.
A clear passing of the buck to Democrats for referring to circumventing the Constitution as the "nuclear option". Too bad Frist's claim is about as hollow as Paris Hilton's cranium.
From Fox News on November 14, 2004:
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about one of them, because some Republicans are talking about what they call the nuclear option, and that would be a ruling that the filibuster of executive nominees is unconstitutional, which would require not 60 or 67 votes but only a simple majority of 51.
FRIST: Yes. That's right.
WALLACE: Are you prepared to do that?
FRIST: Oh, it's clearly one of the options. I've always said it's one of the options. What it basically -- it's called the nuclear option. It's really a constitutional option. And what that means is that the Constitution says you, as a Senate, give advice and consent, and that is a majority vote. And then you vote on that, and that takes 50 votes to pass.
Then two days later on NPR:
Sen. FRIST: If we continue to see obstruction where one out of three of the president's nominees to fill vacancies in the circuit court are being obstructed, then action would be taken. One of those is the nuclear option. The Constitution says advice and consent is the Senate's responsibility; the president's responsibility to it is to a point, and therefore, if the Constitution says `advice and consent,' by 50 votes you can decide to give advice and consent. Will we have to do that? I can't tell you, but I can tell you if obstructions are to continue like they have in the past, that clearly is an option that we have on the table.
(Thanks to Atrios...)
P.S. In other news, Tom DeLay just got deeper into the shit. This time, he's stewing for charging an airline ticket to a lobbyist's credit card...
UPDATE: Supporters of Senator Frist's nuclear option decided to take out some aggressions at a Dairy Queen owned by the wife of Senator Ken Salazar (D-Co.) in response to the Senator's comments about the right wing attack on filibusters.
In all my days, I never thought I'd see a bunch of Republicans gang up on the wife of a Democratic politician...What a world...
2nd UPDATE: It looks like it may have been GOP Senator Trent Lott that coined the phrase "nuclear option".
"I'm for the nuclear option, absolutely," Lott has said. "The filibuster of federal district and circuit judges cannot stand. ... It's bad for the institution. It's wrong. It's not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I'm perfectly prepared to blow the place up. No problem."
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