Ungifting

There's an old saying about sports team general managers: sometimes the best trade is that trade you don't make.

Merry Christmas, America!

From last night:

Speaking now on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) says he is “sorry and disappointed” to announce that he does not have the votes for the omnibus spending package. Instead, he will work with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to draft a temporary continuing resolution to fund the government into early next year.

Reid says nine Republican senators approached him today to tell him that while they would like to see the bill passed, they could not vote for it. He did not reveal the names of the nine. A top Senate source tells National Review Online that “it looks like Harry Reid buckled under the threat of Republicans reading [the bill] aloud.”

With at least four Republicans onboard with a yes vote early on, which red-state blue dogs got peeled off?

Who cares? Maybe the message sent on November 2nd got through to a few people. Let's party!



And in somewhat related news also with respect to yesterday...

On this day in 1773, a group of colonists disguised as Indians boarded British merchant ships and dumped into the Boston Harbor an estimated £10,000 worth of tea as a protest against British colonial policies. John Adams declared this event, that we celebrate today as the Boston Tea Party, to be the “grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened.” What led once loyal colonists to protest the World’s leading power? How should we think about the Tea Party two hundred thirty-seven years later?

Reid will try to bring the DREAM Act and Don't Ask Don't Tell to a floor vote on Saturday. The votes on those may shed some light onto whether the defeat of this odious symbol of business-as-usual in D.C. was a product of mere vote-buying or a signal that the message sent last month was, in fact, received loud and clear.

Either way, we hope this will embolden the incoming class of Congressmen and Senators that they have a golden opportunity to change the culture back there and that with the will of the American people at their back, change is indeed possible.


Yes, we can!