{"id":4444,"date":"2009-08-03T11:57:20","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T18:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=4444"},"modified":"2009-08-03T12:43:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T19:43:12","slug":"apparently-doc-hastings-is-talking-a-lot-these-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/08\/03\/apparently-doc-hastings-is-talking-a-lot-these-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparently, Doc Hastings is talking a lot these days."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this is kind of interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 From the blog of Seattle’s very own Stranger<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Somewhat shocking is that Doc Hastings talked more than anyone else in our House delegation last session because, well, who the fuck knows anything about Doc Hastings?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Well, the man resides in the part of the state which\u00c2\u00a0Stranger readers in\u00c2\u00a0Seattle would drive past without stopping, in infrequent forays to Spokane.\u00c2\u00a0 So he would be the most likely “Invisible Man” in a Washington Congressional Congregation.\u00c2\u00a0 But I think I can debunk this:<\/p>\n

Something tells me Doc Hastings is the Congressional equivalent of an old man writing angry letters to the editor, or sitting on his porch yelling at kids to get off his lawn.<\/em><\/p>\n

No, he is nowhere near as interesting or illuminating.\u00c2\u00a0 Pursue the quotations of Doc Hastings at your own leisure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week I marvelled at a reference to Doc Hastings as having emerged as a “leading critic” of the Obama Administration.\u00c2\u00a0 This, I suppose, is the transformation of a relatively small fish in a big pond\u00c2\u00a0as a mid-bench member of the Majority Party to a relatviely big fish in\u00c2\u00a0a small pond as a slightly further up in the middle benches member of the Minority Party.<\/p>\n

From that perch, Hastings has found the new found role of scheduling massive floor speeches.\u00c2\u00a0 That, apparently, fits the bill these days in terms of “emerged as a leading critic”.\u00c2\u00a0 (Also, I guess push polls<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0fits that bill, but that may have always been there.)\u00c2\u00a0 It is a brisk walk down from his previous role.\u00c2\u00a0 He used to be a frequent gaveller, meaning even when he didn’t speak, he logged a lot of time on C-SPAN.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, one of Doc Hastings’s career highlights, I would say, was being the man that held up the 15 minute voting session for the Medicare D program to three hours — recently referenced in the Dennis Hastert portrait raising ceremony<\/a>.:<\/p>\n

In his prayer opening event, Rev. Daniel P. Coughlin, the House chaplain, noted that Mr. Hastert was also a wily strategist who learned to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153never take his eye of the clock, but use it to his advantage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an apparent reference to Mr. Hastert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to hold open a floor vote for more than three hours to secure approval of the Medicare drug program.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stepping aside his placement on the institutionally ineffective Ethics Committee when it threatened to actually do a job and look into Tom DeLay, the most\u00c2\u00a0bizarre moment in Doc Hastings career came when Hastings was\u00c2\u00a0placed\u00c2\u00a0as an extra-constitutional\u00c2\u00a0Emergency Provisional Speaker in case of a chaotic Armegeddon scenario<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0— which, come to think of it, would make for the most dull and uninspired\u00c2\u00a0work of Speculative Fiction imaginable.<\/p>\n

If you throw in his latest battle against roaming horses, a not altogether absurd position except that he’s phrased it as “welfare for wild horses”, and the rather sedate comfortably fiefdomed Congress-critter\u00c2\u00a0(who can get by so long as he can secure necessary Hanford funding) actually becomes a mildly interesting figure.<\/p>\n

I am wondering what the floor voice chart would look like in, say, 2003-2006 as opposed to 2007-2009.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, does the out party –\u00c2\u00a0having to find\u00c2\u00a0its place as an oppositional force–\u00c2\u00a0take to the floor and speak a lot?\u00c2\u00a0 This results in such a situation\u00c2\u00a0as Earl Blumenauer describes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the middle 1980s, as Ronald Reagan’s “revolution” settled to its deal-making and reality checking against old guard Republicans and incumbent Democrats, a band of Republicans, largely elected in 1980 off of Reagan’s coat-tails, took to the floor and offered up a steady dose of ferment — a cluster of Republicans trying to\u00c2\u00a0turn around their debate\u00c2\u00a0through C-SPAN,\u00c2\u00a0the man who made a name for himself\u00c2\u00a0with this legislative tactic being\u00c2\u00a0one Newt Gingrich.\u00c2\u00a0 Tip O’Neil became annoyed enough by a projected outside image of stampeding movement conservatives that he had C-SPAN shift production to have the cameras scan around the Congressional chambers and reveal the emptiness of the chambers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this is kind of interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 From the blog of Seattle’s very own Stranger: Somewhat shocking is that Doc Hastings talked more than anyone else in our House delegation last session because, well, who the fuck knows anything about Doc Hastings? Well, the man resides in the part of the state which\u00c2\u00a0Stranger readers in\u00c2\u00a0Seattle would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doc-hastings-and-the-4th-congressional-district-of-washington-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4446,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}