Who said this?

"They are trying to divert attention from the issue at hand, they'd like to turn the Senate into a procedural quagmire. They want to hide behind weak and misleading arguments about the Senate's rules or a senator's right to offer amendments. These arguments are diversions."

“The American people can see what is happening here,they know that some want to prevent a vote at all costs.”

No, this was not a quote from the last congress by Bill Frist the then republican leader on the democrat attempts to prevent the full senate from voting on a series of judicial nominees.

The first quote was by the current leader of the Senate expressing frustration about the GOP's ability to prevent the Senate from considering a symbolic attempt to embarrass the president. The second was by Ben Nelson of Nebraska. By the way, the democrat's leader prevented a GOP vote on a resolution, a bit less symbolic, which would have denied the right of the majority to withdraw funding from the troops in Iraq.

There were seven members of the GOP caucus who voted to begin the debate and both the NYT and the WP suggested that the support in the GOP was declining but all of the seven were members who had previously opposed the president's plan for building troop strength in Iraq. There were nine members of the GOP caucus who did not vote (two were in Iraq and one campaigning for the presidency) although the WP failed to mention that fact. (The way the post described the absentees was a bit strange - they highlighted that Tim Johnson was still absent but then simply said 10 members did not vote - 9 of those were from the GOP.)

The Senate blabbered on yesterday about this symbolic gesture yesterday but has thusfar refused to respond to any more substantive proposals either to escalate or diminish our presence in Iraq. If the democrats really were trying to make policy then they would have introduced a substantive resolution. But, of course, this is more about style points than substance.