The smart politics of the detainee vote

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - When the House voted Wednesday to pass the Bush administration-supported bill on treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base, the biggest surprise— at first blush — was that Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, a fierce opponent of the Iraq war and of President Bush, voted for the bill.

Brown, the Democrats’ Senate candidate in Ohio against Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, led all House Democrats in 2005 in the percentage of votes in which he opposed the president: 93.5 percent, according to Congressional Quarterly.

Brown is now appealing to voters beyond his own strongly Democratic district and needs to win over all Ohio voters since he’s in a tight race with DeWine.

Brown explained his vote this way in an interview with MSNBC.com Thursday: "Unlike Mike DeWine, I'm willing to stand up to my party when they're wrong."

Why Brown voted 'yes'
He said the detainees "are not soldiers, not combatants representing a government, these are terrorists."

He added, "I supported a compromise because I think John McCain, a former prisoner of war, understands what we need to do to ensure our soldiers are safe."

He added, "Some people just don't want me to agree with George Bush on anything."

Brown’s vote for the detainee bill made sense. In one move, Brown snatched away an issue that the Republicans might have used to tar him.

The House vote Wednesday means that there are few Democrats who offer targets to the GOP on this issue.

All but one of the House Democrats whom the Cook Political Report rates as being in close races (the “Lean Democrat” category) voted for the bill. The only Democrat in that category who voted ‘no’ was Rep. Allan Mollohan of West Virginia.

Senate passes bill, 65-34
The Senate followed suit Thursday evening with a 65-34 vote to pass the detainee measure. The bill will create military tribunals to prosecute terrorism suspects.  

Before the final vote, the Senate rejected a number of amendments, including one that would have put a five-year limit on the tribunals and would have required the president to seek re-authorization from Congress at the end of the five years.

Of the 12 Democratic senators who voted "yes," five must face voters this November.

Those five Democrats included Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who's locked in a tight race with GOP candidate Tom Kean Jr., and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who lost the Democratic primary to anti-Iraq war challenger Ned Lamont. Lieberman is now running as an independent.

On the Senate floor during the roll call, Lieberman pondered for several minutes and was one of the last senators to cast his vote. Before doing so, he had what appeared to be intense conversations with four of his Democratic colleagues who also voted for the bill, including Menendez.

Asked what persuaded him to vote for the bill, Menendez said, "In view of the fact that the (Supreme) Court has ruled the existing process unconstitutional, it leaves us without anything. It seems to me while it is not the bill I wanted — as evidenced by the way I voted on the amendments — I think there has to be a process in place. I wouldn't want those who have committed acts of terrorism to ultimately find the ability to be free by virtue of a lack of a (tribunal) process."

Only one Republican, Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, voted against the bill.

A few hours before the Senate voted to approve the bill, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said “no one is going to be intimidated” by GOP attacks on the detainee issue.

He told reporters, “We’ve polled this extensively” and he argued that detainees and tribunals “are secondary issues to most people.”

The bill would allow for the creation of military tribunals to try suspected terrorists.

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