Harry Reid's Brilliant Capitulationist Filibuster Strategy

Continues to pay utterly predictable dividends.

From MSNBC:

Failure of filibuster reform puts Hagel confirmation at risk

Zachary Roth, @zackroth

2:40 PM on 02/14/2013

Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s choice for Defense Secretary, is at risk of not being confirmed, thanks to a potential Republican filibuster—just weeks after Senate Democrats backed down in their bid to make such filibusters far harder. That’s got progressive activists who pushed for reform telling Harry Reid and co.: ‘We told you so.”

Last month, a group of Democratic senators, backed by a coalition of leading progressive groups, tried to significantly scale back the use of the filibuster, which in recent years the GOP has abused to grind the Senate to a virtual halt. But Reid, who had once embraced the reforms, appeared to lose his nerve, instead forging a deal with Republicans on a much weaker set of changes.

Advocates of reform warned at the time that the pact didn’t go nearly far enough. And now they tell MSNBC.com that the showdown over Hagel proves they were right—and underlines why real reform is still needed.

...

And so this flea circus continues to drag on and on:

This Afternoon In Hagel Town
By Charles P. Pierceat 4:30pm

It turns out that Harry Reid didn't have enough votes even to force a vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination to be Secretary Of Defense, even though he's scheduled one for this afternoon. This will leave the whole thing hanging fire over a long holiday weekend, which will give Lindsey Graham and John McCain another chance to yell BENGHAZI!!!11!!!!! on the television set again while the rest of the elves set to work plumbing Hagel's career for evidence of insufficient fealty to the hysteria of the moment. 

First, today, we had the marvelous spectacle of the tiny citizen-journalists over at Breitbart's Marble Coffin And Pantograph, claiming that Hagel had been involved with an organization that probably doesn't exist. Then, we had the Washington Free Beacon and its dauntless pursuit of the speeches Hagel has given to one organization or another. First, there was the one to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League that has finally emerged, and which even Tiger Beat On The Potomac concedes may be a nothingburger...

Remember, the Hagel nomination is being held hostage to exactly the same "Just keep letting the nutjobs shit wherever they please and eventually they'll see sweet reason" theory of government that every new puppy owner knows is ridiculous but that every Beltway toady absolutely demanded that the White House practice to a fault.

Exactly the same "Give up...Give in...Surrender!" mantra that every Grima Wormtongue Centrist meatstick insisted that Barack Obama had some moral obligation to continue to repeat forever...

...and over which they went into paroxysms of public, screaming hissy fits once he finally started to refuse to go along with the gag.