Kay Hagan joins Dingy Harry in stomping out dissent in the US Senate
Our Founding Fathers established the Senate as a counter-weight to the House. Larger states get more representation in the House. The majority party calls ALL the shots in the House. ALL of them. To address the concerns of smaller states, representation was equally assigned to all of the states in the Union. Every state got TWO.
In the House, if you disagree with the majority, you are relegated to the sidelines. Your opinion matters little. In the Senate, the idea was to give the little guys a chance to stand up to the big boys in the majority. One senator in Rhode Island has as much say as a senator from California. A senator does not depend as much on his party leadership as a House member does.
The filibuster came to fruition in the Senate in 1806. The first filibuster occurred in 1837 in the debate over chartering The Second National Bank.
In 1917, the concept of cloture — a process to end debate — came into fruition as a result of Woodrow Wilson’s frustrations with anti-war senators.
Until recently, filibusters involved someone talking non-stop in order to halt progress on legislation. Nowadays, a filibuster is a procedural move that doesn’t involve nearly the effort exercised by Strom Thurmond or by Jimmy Stewart’s Mister Smith.
During the Reagan and both Bush administrations, Democrats in the Congress regularly held up and killed all kinds of appointments by those presidents. Republicans regularly allowed Democrats like Bill Clinton to get their appointments approved, but Democrats rarely returned the favor.
In 2005, the Republican Senate majority decided they’d had enough and threatened the nuclear option — allowing appointments to be approved by a simple majority vote. Democrats — including Nevada senator Harry Reid and rookie Illinois senator Barry Obama — cried foul, citing tradition and the rights of minorities and all that.
Republicans backed off — citing the good ol’ Golden Rule. You know, the Democrats will be in the majority again. Do we want them doing this to us?
Well, they’re in the majority AND they’re doing it to YOU. Yesterday, the Senate rammed through a rules change basically decimating the whole concept of the filibuster. It was basically a party line vote with Democrats Manchin (W. Va), Pryor (Ark) and Levin (MI) joining the Republicans. As expected, North Carolina Democrat Kay “Cross the aisle” Hagan stood with her puppet-master Chuck Schumer and his friends.
I’ve never had a problem with the filibuster. The concept has weakened or halted numerous BAD legislative proposals. Senators Jesse Helms and Barry Goldwater were masters at using the Senate rules to kill bad policy — even that pushed during times of Republican presidents and Senate majorities. I’ve always thought they needed to stick with the concept of non-stop marathon talking.
Gutting the filibuster will allow Barry & Harry to ram all kinds of really awful leftist nominees through the Senate between now and January 2015 — basically setting the Republicans off in the corner. What good will a conservative president or Congress be if their work can be negated by a judiciary packed with leftist ideologues with lifetime appointments?
This should be a wakeup call for people like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis. You can talk all you want about reaching across the aisle. Except, the Republicans do all of the reaching. And quite frequently, they are missing a few fingers when they pull their hands back.
Does anyone remember that Thom Tillis’ first talking point when he announced his intention to run was that he had the ability to reach across the aisle? That needs to be thrown in his face every day until May.
Just like that ”Rover” loser in North Dakota in 2012. Won’t these wimps and cowards ever learn? So Tilli$ is just another Lindsay Graham, and we already have one too many Lindsay Graham’s in the US Senate. We need to get rid of both the orginal Lindsay Graham in SC and his NC clone, Tilli$ in 2014.
This is actually worse than just allowing Obama to pack the courts with radicals, which he will now do. Senate Rule 10 requires a 2/3 vote to change the rules and Reid used some slimy parliamentary shananigans to say he got around that rule. This precedent means that ANY Senate rules can now be changed at the whim of those temporarily in control. Reid is as lawless as Obama, and Hagan should be ashamed of the sorry role she played in this power politics gambit.
Hagan and shame? Don’t hold your breath. Like about 2/3 of the morons in the District of Corruption, there is no shame among liars and thieves.
I have a dream: repeal the 17th amendment. Would things not be entirely different if the senators actually represented the states as our Founders intended? Heck, things would be different if they represented anything but their sorry selves and their sorry parties. I can only think of two or three senators who actually have any adherence to principles.
Don’t stop there. The only way we can really stop the slide towards tyranny in this country is to repeal BOTH the 16th and 17th Amendments. Both of these misguided changes have shifted far too much power to the Federal government.
We also need to remember the cowardly role of GOP ”leader” Mitch McConnell in this travesty on the filibuster, which is well summed up by the Senate Conservatives Fund:
http://www.senateconservatives.com/site/post/2365/harry-reid-nukes-mitch-mcconnell
If Republicans are going to get anywhere in Congress, it is time to get real leaders, not the spineless poseurs we have had recently.
Ought to rename this “Daily Hate Maker”. About all you Teabillies can do.
If US Senators were appointed again, via repealing the 17th Amendment, when would Jesse Helms have been appointed?