Re: How Many Senators Would Have Voted Otherwise?
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While everyone is making a big deal about how the issue was brought to a vote, I think it is important to know what the vote would have been if the internet bill stood alone. My impression is that it would still have passed easily. Am I right? If so that is important to know.
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I know I am coming in way after this discussion has come near a conclusion, but I thought I'd give an answer anyhow. I have not read the rest of the thread.
My understanding is that the bill likely would not have been able to come up for a standalone vote in the Senate on Sept. 29th due to holds. It remains to this day whose holds those were, but they were apparently still out there. Some holds related to horse racing apparently were dealt with and removed, but others remained. Now, these holds could've been defeated via cloture, and I think cloture would've easily passed, but the point was that the Senate never had the time needed to spend up to 30 hours (up to twice!) on cloture on such a small bill.
Since the holds remained, Frist and Co. used the SAFE Ports Act as a vehicle that could be used to jam the Internet gambling language through. Of course whoever was holding the gambling bill could also have held the SAFE Ports Act, but this would have exposed that member or group of members to extreme political pressure/bad press, plus I think everyone knew that Frist could've defeated holds easily with a cloture vote (60 votes required, and the SAFE Ports Act passed with unanimous support).
Purely as a thought experiment, if somehow the Internet gambling bill did come to the floor Sept. 29, and cloture was invoked on the motion to proceed and the bill itself, then I imagine final passage would've cleared with more than 90 votes. The beadth of support in the Senate would likely have been wider in the Senate than in the House -- reason being there are just more fringe members in the House in safe districts than can afford to do politically risky things like vote against regulation of Internet gambling.
So I don't know what this tells us, but I thought I'd give answering your question a whirl, David. Glad to see you engaging in this subject, and marshaling the 2+2 army to think critically about how to intelligently proceed from here.
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