Yester Me: Frist did actively refuse to prevent the Democrat amendments from coming up for a vote,
You say it's a fact, but I believe it is unsubstantiated.
Me: Frist has the power to prevent non-relevent amendments. he declined to exercise that power. That's an established fact, he did not utilize this power when he could have and was asked to do so.
Yester Me: something he could have easily done under the Senate Rules
No, actually GOA had to suggest a strategy to use in the future. Later in the same year they started making it a requirement on some bills that amendments have majority sponsorship before coming to the floor and consuming time.
Me: It beleive it was a rule of the Senate at the time that non-relevent amendments could be excluded.
Yester Me: Frist must have known that an AWB renewal amendment to the LFCA would kill it.
My guess is that Frist avoided a blatant power play by the majority. That during a time when the two parties were pretending to work together and get something accomplished. There is the same dilemma now as they try to figure out how to deal with minority filibustering of judicial appointments.
Me: After decades of support from us, which played a substantial role in creating the Republican majority in Congress and the Whitehouse, we deserve a lot more than this.
Yester Me:I believe Frist's background as an M.D. would lead him to support gun control in preference to tort reform.
A guess for sure. All I know is that my nurse friend says she was surprised to learn that half the staff at the hospital, including surgeons, were packing. I would think that a doctor with his own practice would be keenly aware of the need for insurance and what it covered.
Me: I don't understand how this portrays Frist as pro-RKBA. Someone at THR from TN could look up whether Frist has a CHL, but then again so does Diane Fienstein.
Yester Me: Frist handed us a major defeat at the hands of Finestein et al. when he deliberately allowed the LCFA to be laden with poison pill amendments.
Viewed in a longer term, defeat of that bill allowed the Dems to portray themselves as very anti-gun in an election year and very shortly before the campaign got serious. I would say that the gun vote was pretty well solidified by that debacle. Gun owners who didn't give a rap about ugly rifles suddenly accepted them as the Holy Grail of gun rights and suddenly on their wish lists. If anything, it allowed the gun vote to be important, so I wouldn't call that a defeat. That may not have been the plan, but I'll take the result. Feinstein gambled and lost by making her AWB renewal bill an amendment to another issue.
Me: I agree with you here. It did rally the troops. However, at some point we deserve some reward for our support. If the GOP doesn't step up to the plate eventually they're going to see the 2nd Amend. crowd drift off just as the Christian Conservatives are. They have given up on he GOP on Abortion and Gay Marriage. Karl Rove et al. are in for a nasty shock when Christian Conservatives don't show up in '06.
They all knew the bill would ultimately fail or be vetoed (not "clean"), so it was just ceremony, so they could all make speeches and test or demonize the gun lobby, pro and con.
Me: This bill was quite important to us. Bushmaster, and other gun makers are really suffering under the frivolous lawsuits. Frist had the power to send the bill out of committee clean, and have it passed. Remember that the House had already done so. He blew it.
Yester Me: Frist is NO friend of RKBA. He is merely another RINO paying lip-service to RKBA.
No argument about him being pro-gun. I don't know that he said much of anything. He isn't a RINO though. He is the epitome of what Republican currently means. They are all RINOs if they have to meet some archaic notion of what the standard of being Republican is.
Me: I don't see what's archaic about the GOP supporting the issues that they tell their current base (that would be you and me) that they support. If they're going looking for support amongst the suburban soccer mom set at our expense, then we don't need to give them our unqualified support.
