M.E. Cowan at FailureIsImpossible.com just noticed a new round of astroturf claiming that Democrats in the Senate are acting in a way “tantamount to an attempted coup.” She wondered if this also originated at gopTeamLeader.com, and as this screenshot shows, that is just where it comes from.
This squabble was resolved on January 15 even though GOPTeamLeader.com was still pushing it as a live issue on January 25.
The Democrat-Republican split in the Senate is 49-51, a mirror image of what it was before the election. When the Democrats held the 51-49 majority, committee funding was split almost equally between the two parties. Democrats were outraged when Senate Republicans demanded to get two-thirds of the committee money–after all, a 49-51 split is the same kind of split no matter which party has the 51.
When Democrats refused to go along with this funding change, Republicans accused them of hanging on unfairly to Senate power, blocking the Bush agenda, etc. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), went so far as to call their resistance “tantamount to an attempted coup.”
“Democrats denied the allegations, which Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) denounced as “reckless” and “inappropriate” in a Senate floor speech yesterday morning. They contended that committee organizations took longer in the last Congress, and said they were only seeking to match the distribution of funds to party breakdown in Senate membership.” (Washington Post, January 16, 2003)