Veto

I have my doubts as to whether or not vulnerable Republicans like Gordon Smith (R-OR) who’ve voted in favor of S-CHIP expansion are genuinely upset about the president’s veto threats, but it does put the GOP’s unprecedentedly frequent filibustering of 2007 into interesting perspective. Oftentimes a congressional minority will seek to use the filibuster to spare a president the need to veto a popular bill. But Bush is an unpopular lame duck, and he doesn’t even have a Gore-esque successor figure inside the administration, so there’s really no reason the Republicans couldn’t let a lot of this stuff go through congress and then get vetoed.