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发帖数: 61690 | 1 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday cut the legs out
from a bipartisan effort to keep suspected terrorists from buying guns.
In doing so, McConnell, a master of the Senate’s arcane rules, provided
cover for vulnerable Republicans who wanted to be seen as supporting the
effort, but did not want to cross the National Rifle Association.
“The scenario that Sen. McConnell set up was textbook McConnell,” said
Brian Darling, a former Senate Republican aide.
McConnell had promised a vote this week to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on
her bipartisan measure barring people on two key terrorist watch lists from
buying guns or explosives.
But what he scheduled was not what she had in mind.
Instead of setting up a vote to add the Collins legislation to the pending
appropriations bill on the Senate floor, McConnell scheduled a vote to
discard it.
The Collins bill survived that test in a 46-52 vote, but it fell far short
of winning 60 votes, the threshold necessary to overcome procedural hurdles.
The result allows Republicans to argue that no other action is necessary.
“It didn’t have sixty votes. That’s what a motion to table does. It
demonstrates where the votes are,” said Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman.
McConnell also set up a vote on an alternative sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson
(R-Wis.) that was not opposed by the NRA.
The last-minute measure had no chance of passing the Senate, but gave
political cover for Johnson and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rob Portman (R-
Ohio), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),
who are all in challenging reelection races this fall.
All six voted against the Collins bill but in favor of the Johnson measure.
Sponsors of the Collins bill say their measure could have passed if
McConnell had set up a positive vote to add it to the bill instead of a
negative vote to kill it, and if he had offered it cleanly without a
competing side-by-side alternative.
“If you put this one up for cloture now, it’s got a good shot,” said Sen.
Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who backed the Collins measure.
He said the Johnson alternative gave his colleagues a reason to vote against
his bill.
“There was a competing one,” he added. “There were two competing
amendments. If there’s only ours left, then I suspect a number of those who
voted for the other one will come over.”
Collins lamented that the way McConnell set up the votes made it tough to
know how much support her proposal could have garnered had it been offered
cleanly.
“That’ll be a question I’ll never know the answer to,” she said when
asked how her amendment would have done had the Johnson amendment not been
there to provide political cover.
When asked if she wanted to have another vote on the proposal, Collins said,
“Of course,” just before taking an elevator down to the Capitol basement.
The maneuver allowed McConnell to slip out of a tough spot.
Pressure on Congress to do something about guns has grown following a Senate
filibuster last week and a sit-in on the House floor by Democrats that
concluded hours before Thursday’s votes.
A CNN/ORC poll released Monday showed that 85 percent of respondents
nationwide favored preventing people on government terrorism watch lists
from buying guns.
By scheduling a vote on a motion to table, McConnell allowed a vote on
Collins’s plan without giving it any real chance of passing, averting the
wrath of Second Amendment advocates.
Thursday’s votes effectively quashed the momentum behind the gun-control
measure that had built throughout the week. |
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