Reply #1: Other key comments made yesterday:

[seemslikeadream]

....

Senator Richard Durbin: "Instead of calling a vote, should call the White House. Because if they will produce the basic information which and his staff had access to . . . it's the end of the controversy. Clearly, there is something in those documents which is so damaging to Bolton, they don't want to release it."
White House spokesperson Erin Healy: "This is about partisan politics, not about documents. They have the information they need."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: "Democrats keep moving the goalposts."

Senator Christopher Dodd: "If the goal posts have been moved at all, they've been moved in the administration's direction"

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: "As long as the White House is not allowing the information to come forward, there's going to be no change in the vote."


Senator Frist seems to be nuking the Bolton nomination by calling for a second cloture vote which will fail. With Pryor defecting, the White House is losing even more ground on Bolton.

This doesn't mean that those opposing Bolton are sure to win.

The White House could surprise us all by providing generous access to the NSA intercepts and names of redacted identities of U.S. individuals. Condi Rice could say that since the State Department provided other "documents on policy deliberation" to the Foreign Relations Committee on Bolton, she might as well send over the documents on Bolton's planned Syria testimony in 2003. And White House ethics could send over the roster of Matthew Freedman's international clients, which he maintained while pulling down more than $110,000 a year for a part-time gig with John Bolton's office as "Special Assistant."

The White House could provide these three modest packages of information -- and the vote on Bolton would occur very soon after.

TWN hopes that the material is enough to derail a couple of other Senators on Bolton, but the White House could still surprise us with a dose of magnanimity.
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