Dear Pundettes, Coumnists, Talking Heads and Partisan Spew Monkeys,
You may have misspoken when you said "... that's what you have to do to get the super majority needed to pass things in the Senate." It would have been more accurately put to say "... that's what you have to do to END DEBATE in the Senate."
Either as a meme strategically crafted by political actors with nefarious intent or as casual intelligencia shorthand this micro-narrative has become ubiquitous. It is at best misleading and at worst deceitful. This suggestion reinforces the idea that the Democrats are powerless in this situation and without ANY more options. They can make the Republicans filibuster in the traditional sense. Below is my post script, of which, all points you are already aware.
Otherwise thanks for the great work,
E. Mickey Peavler
Post Script
1) The senate needs 51 votes to pass a bill; they need 60 votes to end debate. The endless repetition of this misstatement is starting to make me believe the Democrats would rather loose a policy battle than win after a filibuster.
2) The nuclear option is nuclear, but it is an option.
3) The problem with Republicans is Democrats. Harry Reid is the bad actor in this scenario and we should not blame Republicans for acting like Republicans.
4) I've seen and heard it reported that the Senate of the 110th congress broke the record for filibusters, but not one of them did Harry Read force to the floor. They were "technical filibusters" which gave the Republicans all the benefits of obstructionism with none of the downside of the optics of obstruction.
No comments:
Post a Comment