Needed: Junior Chess Champion For Role Of Democratic Majority Leader

Can Steny Hoyer think more than one step ahead? Yesterday the Republican leadership put forth a poison pill amendment to the RESTORE Act that would have meant nothing legislatively, but would have thrown the bill back into committee, delaying the vote. So the Democrats pulled the bill from the floor until next week.

Um, why would the Democrats be afraid of delay when the "Protect America Act" that this bill seeks to fix will expire in three months? Why didn't the Majority Leader say that "we'll have a vote on the amendment, and if it goes back to committee it'll never get back out again," and then if the Republicans persisted and voted on it and bottled the legisltion up, Democrats could accuse Republicans and their amendment for failing to protect America. And Bush would scream his head off, and Democrats could say "take it up with your own party, Mr. President, they threw the bill into committee, not us." And Adam Nagourney would write a "Republicans in disarray" thumbsucker story, and there would be accusations flying back and forth, and come February wiretaps fall under the jurisdiction of the FISA court again, and the DNI Michael McConnell would yell "oh no, we're all gonna die" and the Majority Leader could come out and say "Now do you want to play nice, House Republicans, or do you want to cause the deaths of thousands of Americans?"

Why couldn't THAT have happened? Why is every GOP roadblock seen as a roadblock instead of an opportunity? Whatever happened to turning the tables?