Move to censure Bush will have political fallout

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - A short, but sharp partisan skirmish broke out on the Senate floor Monday when Majority Leader Bill Frist tried to schedule a vote for Monday night or Tuesday on Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold’s resolution to censure President Bush.

Frist said Democratic senators ought to be on the record voting for or against the Feingold resolution.

“If the Democratic Party is going to be attacking the president in a time of war, then we are ready to vote and let’s see what the Democratic Party says,” Frist told reporters right after the floor skirmish. 

“I don’t know where the Democratic leadership is right now,” he said, but if they support censuring Bush “then I want them to all be on the record.”

But Democratic leaders objected to a roll call vote and it was postponed indefinitely.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md, who was leading the Democrats on the floor at the moment Frist made his motion for a vote, said that Frist hadn’t consulted with Democratic Leader Sen. Harry Reid beforehand to give him advance warning of what he was about to do. But a Frist aide said the majority leader had informed Senate Democrats of his intent to seek an immediate censure vote.

Putting Democrats on the spot
If Frist had succeeded in bringing Feingold’s resolution up for a floor vote, it would have put on the spot Democrats who are thinking of running for president in 2008, such as Sens. Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, and John Kerry.

Feingold himself is a potential 2008 Democratic presidential contender.

Frist’s comments seemed to make clear that Republicans think Feingold has handed them an attractive political opportunity and that a vote would divide their opponents.

Feingold’s resolution would censure Bush for ordering surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) to listen in on conversations of al Qaida suspects outside the United States with persons inside the United States.

“This is a political stunt,” Frist said of Feingold’s resolution, after he walked on the Senate floor just before Feingold was about to speak.

“It is addressed at attacking the president of the United States when we’re at war, when the president is leading us with a program that is lawful, is constitutional, that is vital to the safety and security of the American people.”

A few hours before the floor skirmish Reid told reporters he hadn’t had a chance to read Feingold’s resolution but said, “I commend Sen. Feingold for bringing this to the attention of the American people. We need a full and complete debate on this NSA spying.”

Lieberman voices misgivings
But Sen. Joe Lieberman, D- Conn., voiced some misgivings and hinted that he’d vote no on the Feingold resolution.

“Frankly I’d prefer to spend our time on figuring out ways to bring this very important program of surveillance of potential terrorists here in the United States under the law…. I disagree with the Bush administration’s legal judgment on this one…. But this is a critically important program to the prevention of terrorist acts here in the United States.”

Feingold’s resolution may be getting a warmer reception from grass-roots Democrats than it is from Reid and Lieberman.

In Iowa, Democratic congressional candidate David Loebsack said he supported Feingold’s resolution.

“In my district, there is considerable discontent with the Bush administration on almost all fronts, including the Iraq war, the NSA surveillance, and many other issues,” Loebsack. “When the NSA story broke, many were appalled that Bush would do what he did.  There is a clear consensus here that he broke the law and that there has to be an accounting for what he did.”

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