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June 11, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - June 11

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER, (D), NEW YORK: If senators cast their votes with their conscience, they would speak with near unanimity that there is no confidence in the Attorney General.

SENATOR TRENT LOTT, (R), MISSISSIPPI : The main point is, that is not our job. We don't have authority to make that determination. So what are we going to accomplish here today? This is all about partisan politics. Nobody is fooled by this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, in the end, it didn't actually happen. What happened was, the Democrats, who were sponsoring this no-confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales moved to bring it to the floor as you must do in the Senate. The Republicans resisted, and to stop that resistance it takes 60 votes.

They finally got around to voting on whether to vote, in effect. They got only 53, so the matter dies.

Some thoughts on the this whole exercise now from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of the Weekly Standard, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent, National Public Radio, and Mort Kondracke, Executive Editor of Roll Call, FOX News contributors all.

Well, Mort, what was this about? We heard lots of criticism of the Attorney General, most of them from Democrats, although some Republicans, Senator Specter for one, weighed in.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yes, well, I think both senator Schumer and Senator Lott were exactly right. There is not a great deal of confidence in Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General in the United States Senate on either side of aisle, and it was also a political stunt with no real meaning.

But the more you listen to this debate, listen to the Democrats talking, it occurred to me that what they ought to do is team up with their House counterparts and file articles of impeachment against Alberto Gonzales if they really believe that he did all the nefarious things that they accused him of doing. Lying under oath to Congress, undermining the United States Constitution and the rule of law. Harry Reid accused of being one of the masters of torture.

You know, if he is so bad, filing a silly, meaningless, no-confidence vote is trivial. And so they ought to get serious.

HUME: What do you think about that Mara? Should they drop the H bomb on him?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PLUBLIC RADIO: I don't know if they want to drop the H bomb.

Look, I agree with what Mort said, this was a political exercise. On the other hand, he does have very little support, and anytime when you are going to have all of his various weaknesses and transgressions recited on the Senate floor is not a good day for the administration.

However, I thought the vote was interesting. They did get seven Republicans to join with the Democrats. And of those seven, five of them are the most vulnerable Republicans in 2008, Coleman Collins, Smith, Snow, and Sununu. Those are the people who are most at risk in the next election. So that was no surprise, either.

But now this is over and they will maybe move back to immigration.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, WEEKLY STANDARD: It was so important that nine senators didn't bother to vote. One of them was Tim Johnson of South Dakota who was ill.

But, I mean this was such a trivial matter. You had to give up the immigration bill so they could get to this?

A lot went on and on. You had a byte from Senator Lott, he went on and on, he was funny talking about how this degrades the Senate, we have never done this before. Why are we wasting our time on this?

Here's where Democrats hurt themselves. I think if they would have had a different senator other than Schumer, who's loathed as a partisan hack by all the Republicans, moderate, liberal, conservative, they might have gotten more votes from the Republicans who.

I mean, the truth is, as both Mort and Mara said, there's not a lot of support among Republican senators for Alberto Gonzales.

HUME: By the way, what did anyone make of this new poll that we showed earlier today from Rasmussen Reports that shows that Harry Reid's favorability ratings with the American public is now at 19 percent. That's the same level as Scooter Libby, and only half that of the non too popular Vice President Cheney.

LIASSON: What was the number of people who actually knew who he was?

HUME: Well, look at this. Enough people knew who he was if you get up to 64 percent with a view one way or the other, that's not so bad.

The question, what does that tell you? Is that about stuff like this? Is that about the role that he has allowed Senator Schumer to be playing? Or does anybody notice? Why is he so unpopular?

Usually these kinds of majority leaders in the Congress are kind of pastel figures. Not well known.

BARNES: In all the polls, the Democratic Congress has the same approval rating of President Bush, which tells you a lot. And what it tells you is that the public wants to get stuff done. They want to get meaningful, important things accomplished, and this Congress is playing politics.

LIASSON: And that number, that approval rating, is 35, which is the same approval rating that the Republican Congress had before voters got rid of them.

KONDRACKE: Harry Reid doesn't have the same poll rating as President Bush, he is 15 points lower. And the truth is when you see him bumbling through these press conferences, and so on, and he certainly was not heroic on the immigration bill or other things, people look at him and they realize Congress is getting nothing done, and they think one of the reasons is there is a bumbling majority leader.

HUME: What about that? What is the view among Democratic Senators? Is he thought of as a guy that is doing all the dirty work and catching all the flak? Or is he though of as a bumbler?

BARNES: What he is doing the bidding of Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, who are the brains of outfit, and he is more or less the front man, and managing the machine, but they are the ones who a are driving it.

KONDRACKE: The Republicans would narrow it down. They'd say Chuck Schumer is running the show.

HUME: Really?

KONDRACKE: Yes, that's what they think.

HUME: What about that, Mara?

LIASSON: Look, I think that Chuck Schumer is not running the show by himself. He certainly is the head of political arm of the Senate Democrats, and he's been pretty able in that capacity, and I agree that he makes a lot of Republicans angry.

But look, I think that there are challenges for the Democratic Congress, I agree with you. The voters changed Congress because they wanted something different, and they didn't think things were getting done under the Republicans and they wanted to give the Democrats a chance. And now the Democrats have a chance to do things and so far they haven't accomplished either the things on their agenda, or some of these areas where there are bipartisan compromise, bipartisan consensus, like immigration.

HUME: Speaking of which, we will come to that immigration bill and who is to blame for its being stalled and what may happen next. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID, (D) NEVADA: As much as any piece of legislation we have had here, other than the Supplemental Appropriation Bill these past six months, this is the president's Bill, the headlines are going to be Democrats vote to continue the Bill, Republicans vote against it. The president fails again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: I know that sound bytes is three or four days old, but I just like it so much, I have to keep looking at it.

In fact, of course, the vote that he is talking about is a vote in which the Democrats are trying to cut off debate on Bill, and that was for the purpose of bringing it to a vote.

The Republicans wanted to continue to debate the bill and continue to try to offer amendments. And after the Democrats failed under Senator Reid's leadership to stop the debate move to a vote, he pulled it off the floor. And that is where the matter now stands.

He says, as we heard him say earlier in the program, that he will bring it up again.

This bill has been declared dead any number of times. It seems to survive these things, but is there any real chance it will pass, Mort?

KONDRACKE: Yes, I think there is. If the Republicans will present Reid with a narrower group of amendments, limited number of amendments, Reid says that he will bring the bill back. Now, we will see --

HUME: A narrower list of amendments that they wish to propose, no guarantee on the outcome.

KONDRACKE: Right, right.

HUME: And, of course, you have to presume that if they get their votes and the efforts to amend the Bill do not result in something that is a deal breaker for one side or the other, the bill might go forward.

KONDRACKE: And that is the scenario under which it would happen.

Now, there are lots of people who wonder whether Harry Reid is being disingenuous or not and--

HUME: Whose water do you think he was carrying, if anyone's, in pulling the bill off the floor?

BARNES: Well, there are lots of reports going around, and I don't know if this is true or not, that he was carrying Schumer's water, because- -.

HUME: Whose water was Schumer carrying? Is this labor?

BARNES: The people from the left who want to kill the bill, among others, are the AFL-CIO, and when people voted like Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton, and all the leadership and all the presidential candidates in the Democratic Party, for the Dorgan Amendment which would have eliminated the guest worker program, that that was total --

HUME: It would have eliminated the guest worker program after five years.

KONDRACKE: Well, the first amendment was to eliminate it entirely, and then it was to sunset it. Those are both AFL-CIO amendments, killer amendments.

LIASSON: Now look, there's a debate inside the Democratic Party about whether it's a good thing or a bad thing for the Democrats to pass an immigration Bill. And there are a lot of Democrats who feel it is a good thing in the end. Now they can't--

HUME: To what?

LIASSON: To pass it. To pass it, mostly because they think that this issue is so bad for the Republicans whether the Bill passes or not. Look at the split that's exposed inside the Republican party.

HUME: Well, it seems to have exposed some with inside the Democratic coalition as well.

LIASSON: The rifts inside the Republicans are much deeper, and over time, Democrats feel, that Republicans are just on the wrong side of history in terms of the Hispanic demographic, which is the biggest, fastest growing one in American politics.

But today, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, and Patty Murray all sent this letter to the president saying Democrats are for this and they want to bring it back up.

And we will see if they do. But I think what Mort is saying is correct. There has to be some kind of limited numbers of amendments, you can't have hundreds of them. But Harry Reid has to agree to put it back on the floor. And then maybe Ted Kennedy will be right, and they are only two days away from passing it.

BARNES: This letter was a phony political letter saying, once again, it's up to you, Mr. President. There was only one person in the entire universe who can bring this bill back, and his name is Harry Reid. It's not the president, it's not the Republicans.

Look, Harry Reid knew perfectly well on Thursday, last Thursday that Republicans were about to give him a shortened list of amendments that they would ask for. And now it is going to be ten Republican amendments, ten Democratic Amendments.

A number of Democrats who wanted to continue this debate as well. Why? Because it never went through the committee process. It wasn't there for days when the details were worked out. All the details have to be worked out on the Senate floor, so that takes a little longer.

There was no reason for Harry Reid to shut it down on Thursday. All Republicans had asked is, look, put off of cloture vote until Friday morning.

LIASSON: Even Republican leadership were angry about the--

BARNES: No, no, they were angry because they were being jerked around by a few Republicans who opposed the Bill.

But they were about to get to this list--I think they have of--look, the coalition is meeting to evening, these are the Democratic and Republican senators, Ted Kennedy, John Kyl and a group of others, Ken Salazar, the Democrat, and so on.

But here is why Reid is most in trouble. The people who know that he is the one who is responsible here are all the immigrant groups and other liberal groups associated with them who are very -- the Hispanic groups. They hold Harry Reid responsible. They know Bush didn't write the Bill. He supports it, but had very little to do with it. Harry Reid is the guy--

HUME: The president is going to the Hill tomorrow. Does he have left in his hours to move anybody?

KONDRACKE: I don't think so. I think that the president--this is a nice thing for him to do, but I don't think he is going to move anybody. Those people have all dug in their heels.

LIASSON: I agree. As Phil knows it's not going to be because of President Bush's powers of persuasion at this point.

KONDRACKE: Look, Harry Reid is going to get a list. Republicans want this many amendments, Democrats want this many.

HUME: Do you think the bill will go forward?

KONDRACKE: I think he is going to have to call it up, and it will go forward.

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