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July 19, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - July 19

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

SEN ARLEN SPECTER, (R) PENNSYLVANIA: And speaking for myself, I have been in this body for a substantial period of time--I think that what has happened in the past 24 hours has been an indignity. This is reputed to be--

SEN HARRY REID, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, (D) NEVADA: Mr. Chairman, I would ask for regular order?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there an objection?

SPECTER: I do object, and I would also--

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The objection is heard.

SPECTER: The leader speaks at great length, and when another member seeks to speak, he ought to be accorded that privilege.

REID: Mr. President?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The majority leader does have the floor.

REID: He is going to have all day to talk.

HUME: Well, they just had all night to talk, in fact, and it was in the aftermath of the all night session, that led to a failed attempt to pass the resolution Democrats said would have the effect of ending the war in Iraq by sometime next April, that all of that happened.

Was this just a case of nerves made tense by an all-night session, or was something deeper involved here? Some thoughts on all this now from our Bill Sammon, Senior White House Correspondent of the Washington Examiner, Jeff Birnbaum, columnist of the Washington Post, and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

Some Republicans are saying they haven't seen it this bad, in terms of atmosphere between the two parties in the Senate, in a long time. You heard Arlen Specter complaining there. He is usually someone who gets along pretty well with Democrats.

So, what is going on here? Is the partisan atmosphere in Washington getting worse?

BILL SAMMON, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I think the polls show that Americans hold Congress in the lowest esteem in history.

HUME: We have a poll on that, now that you mention it, bill, that we can show people. This is the Zogby poll. Zogby is not famous for being badly disposed towards the Democrats, and this is, of course, a Democratic Congress.

But 14 percent think that Congress is excellent or good. That is a pathetic. Fair and poor is 83 percent. That is high.

So, that emphasizes your point.

SAMMON: We always hear about the president's low approval ratings, and they are low. But they are not at record lows for a president. By contrast, the Democratic approval ratings are at record lows.

HUME: Well, that for overall, the Congress.

SAMMON: I mean the congressional--what are controlled by Democrats. And they are significantly lower than the president's ratings. So that tells you something. I do think we are at a new level of acrimony--

HUME: Well, what about this question Jeff of--yes, the new level of being acrimony? Is this a new level of acrimony, or is it just the most recent round of it?

SAMMON: I think it is the most reason round, and it is taking a step forward. You remember the Democrats constantly were tying up the Senate during the Republican control of just last year, and then Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to take out the nuclear option to do away with the entire filibustering

HUME: Of judges.

SAMMON: --of judges. But, in any case, it did reach a level of tremendous acrimony just last year. This is an extra level of acrimony, I agree. And the Republicans have turned the tables by taking several pages out of Harry Reid's book of tricks, and bollixing up everything in the Senate, and making it impossible for the Democrats to complete their promise to the American public, which they made last year, that they would not have a do nothing congress, like they had accused the Republicans of having over the last two years.

And the result is the Republicans are, I think, successfully ruining the chances of the Democrats now in charge to declare themselves able to operate in Washington, to get rid of gridlock--

HUME: And to end the war.

SAMMON: --and end the war, which is number one, exactly. And as a way to reverse the democrat's gains of the election of 2006.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, we haven't quite reached the level of the caning into unconsciousness of a member of Congress. This happened in the pre-Civil War era.

HUME: That was a personal thing, though, wasn't it? I mean, some of those incidents were member on member, not party on party.

KRAUTHAMMER: I'm not implying it was a regular event.

HUME: Right.

KRAUTHAMMER: But in pre-Civil War America, we had a lot of polarization in this country, which ended up in a civil war.

So, look, but what we are seeing here is pure partisanship. Obviously Harry Reid and Pelosi have decided they are not going to legislation. Their majorities in the House and Senate are very slim. The president is a Republican, nothing is going to happen.

These two years are all about the election next year. It's all about embarrassing the Republicans. What happened overnight in the Senate was an attempt by Reid to force the vulnerable Republicans in the Senate to vote on his resolutions and debate his resolution.

He did not even allow the wobbly Republicans, who wanted a compromise, to have a vote.

HUME: As a prelude to the al-night session they brought in the cots, with their rather colorful mattresses.

KRAUTHAMMER: As he said himself, he did not want to allow them political cover. He wants all of them exposed.

And on the House side, all that Pelosi is doing is investigating. It will be a Plame investigation, or a Libby investigation, or a FEMA trailer investigation, or a weekly Alberto Gonzalez show, which is now a staple, and is now a series.

But it is nothing about passing real laws and changing anything in Washington. It is all about 2008.

JEFF BIRNBAUM, COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON POST: I don't think that Democrats don't want to legs legislate. I think the Democrats would very much like to legislate, but the Republicans are stopping them from legislating, and that there is a reason why the Republicans want to stop the Democrats from legislating, is that it gives them a tremendous political advantage of their own.

SAMMON: But, furthermore, the Democrats have become radicalized since the election. They, after they won control of congress, started talking about, don't worry, we're not going to be talking without cutting off funding, or timetables for withdrawal.

And within a matter of months, Harry Reid completely changed his mind and has been pulled left by the net roots. He has these weekly conference calls with the hard left bloggers that are increasingly coming to dominate the Democratic Party to the exclusion of people like Joe Lieberman, who used to be the only moderate in the Democratic Party.

And that is contributing to this acrimony. It is not just that Republicans want to bollix up the Democrats, it's that the Democrats have become radicalized, and it is hard to deal with a conservative Republican when you are hard left liberal.

KRAUTHAMMER: The Democrats aren't even attempting to legislate.

BIRNBAUM: No, I think they are attempting tremendously.

KRAUTHAMMER: Harry Reid could have had resolutions that the wobbly Republicans had offered. He wouldn't allow them to come up. Why" He doesn't want compromise, he doesn't want somebody in between. He wants a vote that will embarrass the Republicans.

HUME: But isn't it also the case that it is more than just embarrassing the Republicans, it seems to me. It is an effort to show, and this relates to Bill's point, that the Democrats are doing everything you can possibly do--and staying up all night, at least a smacks of that, even though it was actually an empty and pointless undertaking--at least it looked like effort.

Isn't that a big part of it? That they are trying to show that they are doing as much as they could possibly do, and then at the end of day it's Republican obstructionism that is holding them up?

SAMMON: Well, they can try to reverse the argument by saying that. But the Democrats also stay up all night to prove that they were not running a do-nothing Congress, that they were trying to do something, and they have failed to make that point.

KRAUTHAMMER: It is not to prove, it is to show. He wants the war, and he wants the issue. He doesn't want to stop it.

HUME: When we come back with the panel, what should we make of the diplomatic tit for tat between Britain and Russia over the death of Alexander Litvinenko? Don't go anywhere, we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has giving me certain messages to deliver back to headquarter, which I will now do. I have underlined to him our continuing disappointment at Russia's reaction so far to our request for the extradition of Mr. Lugovoi, and our continuing hope that Russia will find a way to cooperate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Russia is signaling very clearly to the west, and to other countries around the world, we are back on the world stage, we are ready to play a hard ball game. We are not going to roll over and let you step on us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well the British are not really trying to step on the Russians. What they'd like the Russians to do, however, is allow this man, Lugovoi, who is alleged to have been behind the murder in Britain of the former Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko to be extradited to stand trial in Britain for a murder allegedly committed there.

So how serious is this dust up? We've now had diplomats kicked out of Britain, and now Russia has responded by kicking British diplomats out of Russia.

How serious is this breach, or is this just one of these incidents that comes along once in a while, and will soon be forgotten?

SAMMON: in and of itself, it's a lot of palace intrigue, and cloak and dagger stuff. It's like a Russian novel.

But I think the more important ramification is Russia suspending counter terrorism cooperation with Britain. I mean, now you are talking about potentially endangering innocent civilians in Russia, Britain, perhaps even the United States, given that Britain is our closest ally.

So I think it's becoming a bigger deal than the sum of its parts. And it's serving to further isolate Russia because, again, this is a manifestation of their backsliding into totalitarianism under Putin, this ex-KGB agent, and it is not good.

BIRNBAUM: I think that it's really a small tempest in a vodka shot glass. It's not much, this little dust up here.

But it is an indication of a larger effort by Putin to push back to the west. We've seen a whole series of things that he's been doing--trying to prevent the U.S. and its allies from putting missiles too close to Russia, to his border.

And the U.S. has been shooting back at Putin, too, about failing on a number of their promised reforms, both economic and democratic, that they had done.

To the extent that, you remember, it was just a few weeks ago that Putin was invited for a peacemaking session with President Bush at the former President Bush's house in Maine.

Now, I think that Putin, he's suppose to give up his head of government status in not too terribly long. My guess this is all an indication he likes power. He wants to reassert Russian power, and that Putin, himself, is not going be gone when he is suppose to be when his term is up.

KRAUTHAMMER: What's really interesting, here, is that he's gone way beyond just tweaking us. You would expect him, as a way to assert Russia's independence at the end of the Yeltsin era, to go after America as he did on the missiles, as you indicated, and even on the Poles and the Czechs, who are considered too close to the Americans. And perhaps the European left would like that.

But what's interesting is unlike the Soviets who would try to woe Europe against us, he is picking on the Brits. And the Brits, of course-- we have issued a statement of support for the Brits on this. He's prepared to alienate all of Europe. And that's new and interesting, and extremely self-assured and arrogant of him. He thinks he can go it alone all the way

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