What's That Word?

It seems like the message is finally getting out: it was the Republicans who filibustered the vote on the Iraq appropriations bill, not the Democrats, and it was the Republicans who just last year were all het-up for a simple majority up-or-down vote on everything...as long as they were in the majority.

TPM's David Kurtz has been keeping tabs on just how insidious the meme that it was all the Democrats' fault was getting and came up with this winner:

The award for most misleading headline on today's Iraq vote goes to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose website leads with "Filibuster Fails to Force Iraq Vote."

Whoa. Wrong on so many levels.

We were just kicking that one around amongst ourselves. Greg Sargent pointed out that it's a twofer: "The Dems filibustered, and they failed at it. They are filibustering losers."

Just in case all the bamboozling has you confused, it was the Republicans who were threatening to filibuster to thwart a vote on withdrawing from Iraq. Rinse and repeat.

NPR led their morning news with the headline that the Republicans were the ones who blocked the vote, and the Washington Post followed up with this lead paragraph:

Senate Democrats halted their quest to change President Bush's war strategy yesterday after Republicans blocked a proposal to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Of course, you have to wait until the fifth paragraph before the Post actually uses the word "filibuster."

After the results were tallied, Reid asked GOP leaders to accept simple-majority votes. When they refused, Reid announced that the debate would be suspended, possibly until after Labor Day or until Republicans dropped their filibuster. He called the 60-vote requirement "a new math that was developed by the Republicans to protect the president."

That's an improvement over the previous reporting where Josh Marshall notes that if the press did use the F-word, it was the Democrats who were doing the filibustering.

McClatchy on why tonight's filibuster isn't a filibuster ...

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said Republicans would speak on the floor, not just yield to Democrats, but that it wouldn't be a true filibuster because the lawmakers in the minority party weren't the ones who wanted it.

Here's another beaut just out from the AP in which David Espo describes tonight's events but refuses to use the word 'filibuster' until he gets around to describing what the Democrats did four years ago in the judicial appointments fight -- that is to say, when the Democrats did precisely what the Republicans are going to do tonight. (ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader AR for the catch.)

Like I said, the ploy that dare not speak its name -- except when Democrats use it.

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I'm not sure anyone can top this nonsense from Diane Sawyer who says Harry Reid "vows to filibuster."

(Triva note: Did you know that Diane Sawyer worked in the Nixon White House in the speechwriting office? Yeah, it's true.)

At any rate, the GOP was all over the microphones about the Democrats not supporting the troops and all that crap (in spite of the fact that the legislation they were voting on won't take effect until October) and they're aghast -- simply aghast -- that the Democrats would actually show some spine when just a couple of months ago they were cringing and whimpering, afraid of being called "obstructionists." Now that they actually are standing up and living up to their majority, the Republicans are stunned, and they're even more surprised that the media is reporting it.