In the years of Republican domination, the Democrats took a lot of crap for occasionally blocking or slowing down a Republican measure or two. The Carpetbagger Report has an entry entitled The ‘Grand Obstructionist Party’ which states that there have been 13 cloture votes in the first half of the first session of the Democratically controlled Senate. In comparison, during the last two years of the Republican controlled Senate there were a total of four.
For literally years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.
And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it.
Why hasn’t the Democratic Congress had greater success passing legislation in its first six months? Because 239 separate pieces of legislation have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation†that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor.
You know, I warned fellow conservatives that attempting to eliminate the filibuster was a bad idea, because eventually Democrats will control the Senate again. I bet the GOP is glad that there is still “unlimited debate”.
The statistic of only “a total of four” cloture votes is more than a little disingenuous.
Bill Frist, in his time as majority leader, frequently preferred to simply not put legislation on the floor in the first place (or pull it from the floor) if it seemed clear (as was frequently the case) that it would not pass the cloture hurdle.
There are also numerous other procedural tactics of which the minority in the Senate may frequently choose to avail itself (including such things as unanimous consent), as both Democrats and now Republicans have done. Unanimous consent is particularly useful, as a single senator can frequently gum up the works even when both parties want to move forward.
Mind you, Frist was a much weaker majority leader than Harry Reid was a minority leader (the minority having decided advantages to begin with), and Mitch McConnell is probably a stronger minority leader than Harry Reid is a majority leader. Going up against Frist is sort of like playing in the minor leagues compared to facing McConnell.
Ive often heard that Republicans had a plan never to relinquish control of Congress and Presidency,so bi-partisan was never an issue for them .They had been in charge of redistricting in many states after 2000 census,and Delay’s well-documented success of a 2nd redistricting in Texas seemed to say nothing could stop their well-planned agenda.. They had Hispanics on their side by carefully honing their message and they had successfully challenged voters in key areas and kept voting down in areas where a democratic turn-out could have hurt them.And most of all Republicans controlled the AM radio and made sure their side was heard,making sure never to examine issues at large. Public opinion can be mean and misleading,if we listen to only those who speak up. At lot of this is scuttlebut and chatroom wisdom,but let’s not under-estimate that kind of grassroots influence on democracy and our voting system.Republican leadership understood this very early. What seems so ironic is that Republicans have undermined their own base by huge spending and and rampant corruption and ‘immorality’ as bad as any Democratic administration could ever have been envisioned to commit.Every plan has an Achilles heel. It shows how a self-proclaimed mandate to govern has to be approved more than by just ones own leadership,regardless of what the Republicans pundits planned.
One thing that is really annoying is the current belief the best way to improve government is to ‘vote them out’.Whatever happened to bi-partisan government from those duly elected and compromise and good will and getting things done working with people we don’t approve of? Am I too liberal or what? But I was a teacher and I could never vote anyone out.Someone lamented in this blog previously that we have lost American pragmatism,defined as matching a solution to a problem to solve it in the best way for the most good.Democracy is Pragmatism. This is the concept of consensus building..But pragmatism doesn’t seem compatible with belief,so it’s better to go down ‘pure’ and lose the fight,and demonize the non-believers .