Divining Meaning into a non-binding Resolution
I was surprised, a bit, that Ron Paul voted for the non-binding resolution. It seems to strike against Ron Paul’s stance against meaningless Congressional measures — the most cited being opposition to granting Charles Schulz the “Congressional Medal of Honor”.
David Broder, in his latest inside the beltway stratified piece — the theme of which posits Bush’s upcoming Political Comeback — guides us to the dangers of the “non binding resolution”. “Non binding” is by definition meaningless. An act of Congress which, if ignored by the Executive Branch would not result in a Constitutional Crisis, has no meaning. Barney Frank (and I think it was Barney Frank. It might have been Charles Rangle. I wish these things would appear on youtube.) provided the useful rationalization in his floor speech to why this isn’t just wallowing in the impotence that the legislative branch has carved itself — that is, the jarring Susan Collins — Republican Senator of Maine — and her less than Jeffersonian ideals (“Congress shall have the power to declare war”) of “Congress has the duty to speak out”. We have arrived at a certain frame-work with which our political actors are working, and that is that is where we must proceed from.
I understand the rhetorical tools this hands the Bush Administration and his attendent party. I notice that commentators from The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Fox News are throwing out favourable references to Dennis Kucinich, similar to praise Republican pundits have given Ralph Nader for the past decade. They slide themselves behind Bush who is “changing the course” in his troop “surge”, against the Democrats becoming the party of the “status quo” for settling on continuing to fund what we have.
I suspect that the best course of action is, within a three day span, the impeachment of Dick Cheney, the Congressional nomination of Jim Baker — the man whose name is behind that famous “Baker Report” which was supposed to be the tenuous steps forward in Iraq and had the David Broder-esque commenting of “Why Bush Will Listen” as the News magazines’ cover articles last December — as vice-president, and then to impeach President Bush. All this will do is place the nation in a position to see the practicable application of what the conventional wisdom on proceeding with Iraq had turned out to be — which puts us ahead of having to be straddled behind Bush’s commitment to his Guts.
After hearing drabs of right wing radio, this commitment is to win the Vietnam War — by not making the mistake we did then of ending it. As Mark Levin has it, if disaster befalls Iraq now, and if the US is hit by another terrorist attack, from this point on, this date, this vote, on this non-binding resolution, and this Democratic Congress minus 2 Democrats plus 11 Republicans, is what is the cause, the source, the agent of resposibility and blame.
So we have posited in Congressional floor speeches that this Resolution will Force In Muhammed we trust to be stamped on our currency. And so Alaska Representative Don Young mis-quotes Abraham Lincoln, which I note give the Lincoln – haters grist for the mill. (Remind me to get back to that quote… I have a few things to say about it.)
Nothing that forces Congress-critters to air out these opinions can be entirely meaningless.
Working with a debased sense of congressional authority burrows us deeper into the games of politics. Bush might have avoided this by combing through the Baker Report, and I suppose to a true Believer in the Righteousness of Spreading Freedom and Stopping Islamo-Fascists from that this is arguring bi-partisanship as giving into the other party.
Never mind. Ron Paul votes for a non-binding resolution, which shows that the non-binding resolution isn’t meaningless.