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REPUBLICAN U. S. SENATOR UPDATES MARCH 15!  “Top 10 Senate RINOs” by Human Events here; “GOP Senate Whip Failed to Show Leadership on Obama Nominees” by Kay R. Daly on Human Events here; see also NRO’s Ed Whelan “SG [Solicitor General] Nominee Kagan Reported Out of Committee.” Whelan here: “I’ll limit myself for now to the observation that Kyl’s and Coburn’s support for a nominee that no other committee Republican supported is ample proof that Senate Republicans are in abject disarray.  Really pathetic and discouraging.”

The Shame of the U.S. Senate Republican Appropriators

Not that we didn’t all have warning about Republican senators who would put the Obama Mega-Appropriations measure over the top.

Politico’s David Rogers reported on March 5 here –

“In fact, a solid bloc of Republicans—including some in the party leadership—are prepared to help pass the bill but remain shy of voting with Democrats until their colleagues have had a chance to offer more amendments.”

NRO’s David Freddoso declared the same day here –

“A CR [Continuing Resolution] would represent a huge cession of power by Senate appropriators, and it would be almost entirely bereft of pork projects. That is why nine Republicans, most of them appropriators, voted against an earlier Republican amdendment to pass a CR in place of the omnibus. Now, with the threat of a CR brought up once again by Durbin, in a more realistic manner, expect some Republicans to support the omnibus bill when the cloture vote comes.

Take Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), who describes himself as uncertain about how he will vote, but yesterday he declared that a continuing resolution would be “a bad way to run government.” Depending on how you attribute earmarks, he has as many as 40 of them riding on this omnibus, worth a total of $180 million. Alexander is by no means at the top of the earmark-getters, but his experience is instructive in understanding the choices that senators are facing right now.(Underscoring Forum’s.)

The Senate Republican Leadership, nonetheless, has little excuse for the eight-senator Republican defection on the cloture vote which opened the way for final Senate approval of the Obama spending package yesterday.

Here is the cloture vote –  a change of three votes would have stopped the measure.

Three Democrats voted against cloture (Bayh, Feingold, and McCaskill).  Even one of the Maine sisters, Republican Susan Collins voted against cloture. 

In addition to the typically wayward Republicans Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe, however, six ostensibly reliable Republicans (Alexander, Bond, Cochran, Murkowski, Shelby, and Wicker) voted for cloture, thus enabling this Obama Treasury Raid.

Five of the six ostensible regulars (or all save Wicker) are members of the Appropriations panel here. So is Mr. Specter. The good Mr. Alexander here is also chair of the Senate Republican Conference. 

Stopping this measure would have been a fine thrashing of the Obama Machine. 

Our conservative blogosphere has been up in arms about the Anti-Stimulus Package and rightly so, as well as about those three Republican senators who made its enactment possible.  Conservatives need some similar outrage about the Republican senators who made yesterday’s travesty possible, and an accounting from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Faithful readers will recall the earlier Senate Republican debacle in January on the Anti-Energy and Land Grab bill here.

At the very least, the home state voters of these defecting Republicans senators should hear about their vote on, and the details of this dangerous measure.  Local conservative bloggers will have their work cut out for them in spreading the word.

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