Kill the filibuster. Kill it now.
Traditions are nice and institutional prerogatives can be important, but right now on Capitol Hill, the tails are wagging the dog. The filibuster is already dead – Harry Reid killed it when he chose to disregard it to pack the District of Columbia Circuit – and pretending it isn’t is not only ridiculous but it is ripping the GOP apart. It’s like a legislative Weekend at Bernie’s starring pouty Mitch McConnell and fussy little Lamar Alexander.
The filibuster, a mere Senate tradition and not a constitutional mandate, is not just an obstacle to enacting our conservative agenda. It is driving the destruction of the separation of powers. It has turned the legislative branch into Obama’s personal love slave, and this guy is into some sick, freaky stuff.
Obama uses the filibuster, with the aid of his Senate minority minions, as a way to prevent accountability. By refusing to allow a vote on any issue Obama disapproves of, the Democrats are able to leverage the slobbering assistance of their mainstream media friends into placing the blame for a “dysfunctional” Congress onto the GOP despite the fact that the only people preventing the Congress from passing anything are the Democrats. Obama never has to take a real stand. He never has to veto popular legislation. He never has to explain why he is refusing to sign a bill, or why he is shutting down the government.
Instead, you GOP sad-sacks find yourselves selling out the people who sent you to Washington time and time again because Obama can use the filibuster to ensure that the blame for everything lands squarely on you. And you just take it. It’s like an abusive relationship. “Gee, maybe if I was nicer to him he’d let me govern,” you whimper just before he pushes another half-grapefruit in your collective faces.
Obama is Lucy with the football, and you aren’t even Charlie Brown botching the kick. Charlie Brown at least deserved sympathy. You tools are Charlie Brown’s even stupider cousin Myron Brown, who Lucy literally tells, “Come try to kick the football, but when you do I’m totally pulling it away and laughing at you when you fall on your butt.” And then he does it anyway.
This probably makes Ted Cruz Snoopy, the one character who sees clearly what’s happening and who you therefore blame instead of Lucy Obama.
This clusterfark needs to stop. Sure, McConnell and the rest of Team Failure want to retain the illusion that the Senate is some collegial “cooling saucer” of democracy, but their 1962 high school civics class fantasies about how politics works today must give way to reality. Our opponents are not well-meaning fellow Americans who merely want the best for our country just like us. They are dedicated progressives who want to ratchet this country to the left, disregarding the voice of the majority of Americans and systematically violating our rights. Their poisonous ideology must be ruthlessly and completely defeated.
Fight, you gutless wimps! You can’t even pass laws addressing the IRS campaign against our political allies or stopping the Dems from giving $500 million a year in our money to fund baby dismemberment factories. Why? Because of some tradition that’s not even going to be a tradition anymore once the Dems retake the Senate – which they will next year, thanks to you, unless you pry your collective heads out.
Obama is beating your brains in and he is liberating the executive branch from any kind of accountability or checks by other branches. If the legislature can’t legislate – and it can’t because it won’t – it is no longer a co-equal branch of government. It’s just the political catamite of the guy down the street in the White house.
The Republican traditionalists would literally destroy the entire branch in order to save one extra-constitutional, obsolete custom in one of the houses. No wonder people call the GOP “The Stupid Party.”
What’s worse is that we all know that the filibuster is a dead tradition walking. The Democrats aren’t going to be so fussy next time they get a majority. They are going to kill it dead the second it becomes useful to do so and not pause to mourn. You GOP weasels are simply setting yourselves up for a royal shafting when your enemies choose the time and place to drive a stake through its flailing heart.
We keep hearing how McConnell is some sort of legislative genius. Maybe he should start proving it. Without the filibuster, he can send piecemeal bills to Obama’s desk and force him to veto or sign each painful, embarrassing one. He can start doing what the GOP promised to do in 2010 and 2014.
The rise of Donald Trump can be traced directly back to the stubborn, cowardly refusal of the Senate GOP to adapt to modern realities. We voted these guys into office with a mandate, and they promised to act. Their sorry procedural and institutional excuses are just not going to cut it. The GOP can end the filibuster tomorrow. It is choosing – choosing – not to. Which means it is choosing not to do what it promised to do.
Astonishingly, the GOP elite is stunned that Donald Trump is mopping the floor with the establishment candidates. You have not kept your word, Congressional GOP. Boehner was only the first to pay the price. If you don’t end the tyranny of the filibuster and start doing what you promised us you would do, and but quick, you are next.
Kill the filibuster. Kill it now.