National overview
The Unmitigated Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
Charles Cooke wrote an excellent piece setting out the un-American nature of the anti-filibuster crusade, a constitutional, radical game to nationalize politics by empowering slim and fleeting majorities to pursue widely differing generational policies. But it is also worth talking about the drafting of the debate, which was ridiculously misleading. Here, for example, is the White House editor at Politico: McConnell could possibly spread the movement between Ds to sustain the filibuster reform by giving in to infrastructure pay. But he promises to oppose tax increases at all, and in the process has advocates for reform say the network he warns is already here. – Sam Stein (@samstein) March 16, 2021 So, in essence, the argument here is that Mitch McConnell has a kind of duty to create a situation that is created entirely by Democrats who threaten to eliminate the filibuster – ‘reform’ is the euphemism for liberals who are destroying the senate’s norms – by meeting their demands before he even knows what they are. Now, I realize that reporters often see the world through a left-wing prism, but there is not even the slightest curiosity among their readers as to why a fatal emergency did not continue during the Trump years when Democrats – in unprecedented ways, even – with the parliamentary instrument against the president? Democrats illustrated the IDP when he ran the House, Senate and presidency; they illustrated a COVID relief bill and Tim Scott’s criminal law bill, to name just two. The Senate’s IDP had to end the debate on judicial nominees and break filibusters 314 times in Trump’s single term. To put this in perspective, every other president in the history of the United States has faced a combined 244 of the voting rights over a filibuster. Here, however, are the blunt majority offers of the national political correspondent for McClatchy News: Protection for children of parents without papers? Do you need 60 votes? Funding for new roads? 60 votes. Expand early voting? 60 votes. Lifelong appointment to the highest court in the whole country? 50 is not good. Https://t.co/v8aDzWof8v – Dave Catanese (@davecatanese) March 16, 2021 In fact, there are no bills that fund new avenues or the expansion of early voting or the protection of migrant children. There are immigration and ‘infrastructure’ bills with full-scale policies filled with policies that the federal government should not worry about. But if the Democrats want to force states to live under centralized rule, yes, then they should definitely be asked to reach the threshold of 60 votes – at least – to make it happen. Then there is just one of the issues that is a matter of federal importance – judicial appointments – just a threshold of a simple majority, because Harry Reid, not McConnell, inflated the threshold of 60 votes for short-term political gain in 2013 then he thought his party would run Washington in the foreseeable future. Democrats can, of course, correct this big mistake and set the right threshold again. They have the power to do it now. It also became popular to claim that McConnell would probably destroy the filibuster if he got a chance. Where is the evidence for this? Republicans had full control of the government for two years in 2016–17, and not once did McConnell threaten to overthrow the legislative filibuster when he could get stuck through all sorts of giant bills. Democrats, on the other hand, have shown no inclination to function under any consistent principle in this regard – other than perhaps the pursuit of power. In 2017, 30 Democrats signed a letter written by Susan Collins to defend the filibuster as an essential tool to maintain the “deliberative” calm of the legislature. Dick Durbin argued in 2018 that the abolition of the filibuster would ‘be the end of the Senate’. The second highest-ranking senator maintains that “the filibuster has a death knell on American democracy.” Why? Because “Senator McConnell taught me that I was wrong. He has used and abused the filibuster so many times and stopped the Senate in its tracks. What is Durbin talking about in hell? Republicans have not used the filibuster since 2014. What recent bill from them is needed to overcome a filibuster? As far as we know, Democrats do not have the 50 votes needed to pass a national minimum wage increase. Do they have the votes for the “infrastructure” bill? We do not know. Do they have the votes to pass a tax increase? If so, they do not need a filibuster, but can use their reconciliation. In addition, Joe Biden takes premature chutzpah to claim that ‘democracy’ is difficult to function less than a week after signing an all-party, nearly $ 2 billion Democratic Party wish list. There is a much better argument to make that the founders would shy away from the idea that the monster would be beaten by the legislature without any debate or purchase from half the states. According to some of us, the real problem with the modern Senate is not the existence of the filibuster, but the existence of reconciliation – which makes it possible for legislators to avoid the threshold of 60 votes in certain cases. But this debate is only conceived for one purpose by liberals and the media: to empower Democrats to rule more than half the country without any debate or compromise.