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Nebraska Republican pushes Dorgan measure in the House

Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE) took to the public airwaves Friday night to urge House consideration of the Byron Dorgan (D-ND)/Trent Lott (R-MS) Resolution of Disapproval which passed the Senate last fall and would repudiate the FCC's 6/2/03 ruling on media ownership.

Osborne appeared on PBS's "NOW with Bill Moyers."

Supporters of the Resolution gathered signatures for a letter urging House Republican leadership to bring the matter up for a vote before the holiday recess in December. However, Tom Delay (R-TX) and Billy Tauzin (R-LA) have to date been successful in preventing the Resolution from making it to the floor.

"What it requires is what's called a discharge petition," said Osborne. "When you sign a discharge petition, you're essentially going against your leadership. And you better be...committed and willing to pay the price to do that."

Osborne said he hoped that a vote would be allowed, but if not, that there is a fair chance the discharge petition would go forward successfully.

In the Senate vote, 12 Republicans joined in with most present Democrats, voting in favor of the measure 55-40 (9/17/03 RBR Daily Epaper #182). It was expected that four, and possibly all five of the absentees would have voted in favor of the Resolution, giving it bipartisan force, but not enough initial strength to override a potential presidential veto.

RBR observation:

As we have seen in the recent indecency flap, Republicans and Democrats have found a rare patch of common ground. The most liberal and the most conservative members of Congress have been link arms in the assault against objectionable broadcast programming. The approaches to dealing with indecency may reveal differences of opinion, but the will to deal with it is virtually unanimous.

The unity of thought is not nearly the same when it comes to ownership regulation, where many Republicans and a handful of Democrats have generally been in favor of the FCC ruling. Nonetheless, a considerable contingent of Republicans has sided with most Democrats in repudiating the FCC action.

The Republicans have not just been from the moderate-to-liberal wing of the party, either. The presence of the very conservative Lott as a co-sponsor of the Resolution is testimony to that.

We would think that similar sentiment exists among many Republicans in the House - - and the House's overwhelming repudiation of the 45% national TV audience reach cap is testimony to that idea. However, party discipline on the Republican side of the aisle seems to be stronger now than ever, and party loyalists may not wish to do anything that would reflect badly on President Bush in an election year.

So it will be very interesting to see if enough Republicans break ranks to second the Senate on this matter, and then to see what Bush will do if it makes its way to his desk.

Then there's the little matter of the 3rd Circuit ruling, due later this summer.

Stay tuned. This isn't even close to being over yet.