Democrat's First Challenges

The first big one will be the Senate confirmation hearings of Gates for Secretary of Defense. I'm betting this will be less friendly than the MSM wants you to believe, and they aren't making it sound like it will be fun. I also wonder when the hearings will start and finish. The Repugs still have control of this lame-duck session, but will they be able to bring the hearings to fruition in that time? I'm doubting it. Gates' prior hearings set him up for a difficult hearing.

Perspective:

But others cautioned against expecting too much in the change of congressional power and one cabinet post. CFR Senior Fellow Charles A. Kupchan and University of Texas professor Peter L. Trubowitz stress that Bush still holds the foreign policy reins and “there will be more continuity than change (LAT); the ideological excesses of the Bush era are not yet behind us.” As for Gates himself, some reports recalled his tough Senate confirmation hearing for the CIA post in 1991. He was grilled about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra Affair, in which some Reagan administration officials arranged for the sale of weapons to Iran and sent the funds to Nicaraguan rebels. Gary G. Sick, a former National Security Council expert on Iran who applauds Gates’ choice to lead the Pentagon, says Gates was aware of the arms deals to Iran aimed at helping the Contras. “He made it clear that he was aware of it, though there was some dispute about when he learned about it,” Sick tells CFR.org’s Bernard Gwertzman. Gates rose through the ranks of the CIA as a Soviet analyst but has been criticized as being incapable of speaking “truth to power” during the Reagan administration and having exaggerated some of the threats (NYT) posed by the Soviet Union at the time. Gates has said that from the 1970s on, the CIA was under steady criticism from the left and right in America about how it gauged the Soviet threat and has called the agency’s failures during the Cold War “remarkably few and far between” (NPR).

Those are all reasonable things to question Gates on. The question is, how will it work out in the end? The intel exaggerations are definitely on topic with regards to the CIA and I'm betting that topic gets slapped about quite a lot.

Then there is the Bush Impeachment talk.

If U.S. Rep. John Conyers is bluffing, it's a good one.

The Detroit Democrat, who as ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee wrote a bill to consider impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush, now says he won't push for that if he gets the committee chairmanship.

The soon-to-be House speaker and fellow Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, has said repeatedly that no impeachment hearings will be held.

"I am in total agreement with her on this issue," Conyers said in a statement Thursday. "Impeachment is off the table." He was not available for further comment.

But will Conyers follow the rules once he gets the power to subpoena witnesses? Some longtime watchers say they believe he will.

Interesting, but I'm not going to bet the farm that Conyers will remain constrained. Frankly, too much of the fever swamp want revenge on the Repugs for the Clinton impeachment, and BDS is affecting to much of the Dems to really avoid this coming up at sometime.

It definitely will be interesting times in the coming year.