Published for The Washington Post’s Post Partisan, August 17th, 2010:

In my latest column I interview Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who is running in a special election for President Obama’s senate seat and pledges that if he is seated as the 42nd Republican senator in November he will oppose the Democrats’ plans to enact their legislative agenda through a lame-duck session of Congress.

I note in the column that Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) could be seated in November as well, and I speculate that he might also oppose a lame duck since he voted last week for a resolution in the House that would bar that chamber from meeting between November and January. Well, Castle’s office has since confirmed that if elected to the Senate he would, indeed, join Kirk in opposing a lame duck. A Castle spokesperson told me in an e-mail, after reading Kirk’s comments in The Post, that “The Congressman agrees with Rep. Kirk that a lame duck session is no place for controversial legislating.”

And then there is this added wrinkle: Last week Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin also announced his opposition to a lame duck, declaring that such a session would “override the public’s will as expressed at the ballot box.”

So with Kirk-Castle-Feingold in opposition, it appears a center-left coalition is forming that would join with conservatives in blocking the Democrats’ plans to push major legislation through Congress in a lame-duck session. So why won’t the Senate GOP leadership step forward and put the lame duck out of its misery?

Post published here