{"id":24838,"date":"2016-11-19T10:10:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T18:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=24838"},"modified":"2016-11-19T10:10:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T18:10:17","slug":"thank-god-for-filibastards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/19\/thank-god-for-filibastards\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank God for Filibastards!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, I’m a pretty straight shooter.  As much as I hate to admit it, what I have to say here is hypocritical, because I’m a long term opponent of the filibuster, and a long term proponent of the nuclear option.  That said, thank God for the filibastards.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"1119NuclearOption\"Gleeful Republicans see nothing standing in their way to giving tax cuts to the rich, starving the olds and poors<\/strong>, and a Supreme Court that will put women back in the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot<\/strong> now that they have Donald Trump going to the White House and a lock on Congress. Nothing that is, but Senate Democrats and the filibuster. The way around that is of course the way Democrats did it when Republicans were refusing to allow President Obama’s appointments to get to the floor\u2014modifying the Senate rules with 51 votes to end the filibuster on them<\/strong>. So McConnell just has to do that with the 52 votes he now has (or likely will following the Louisiana run-off), right? <\/font><\/font>Or not.<\/font><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) may have put a dagger in the scheme. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Asked by The Huffington Post about ending the filibuster, he was blunt.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you kidding?\u201d he said with some vehemence. \u201cI\u2019m one of the biggest advocates for the filibuster. It\u2019s the only way to protect the minority, and we\u2019ve been in the minority a lot more than we\u2019ve been in the majority. It\u2019s just a great, great protection for the minority.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the most vehement of the Never Trumpers, <\/font><\/font>agrees<\/font><\/a><\/font>, telling reporters on Tuesday that it’s "a horrible, terrible idea," and he would oppose it on the floor "in a heartbeat." Where Graham goes, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is pretty likely to follow, so there’s a definite two and probably three votes to derail any visions McConnell has of neutering the Democrats<\/strong>.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

That’s not to say that McCain, a few "moderates" like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Graham, and an appeasement Democrat or two\u2014the best bets are Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Angus King (I-ME)\u2014won’t become a "gang" to try to let some of Trump’s appointments or legislative proposals get through. The likeliest place we’d see this is in a Supreme Court nomination. There are probably enough endangered red state Democrats looking at their 2018 campaigns to pad those numbers so there will be a Trump Supreme Court… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

From <Daily Kos<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

Yes I’m a hypocrite today, but at least I’m not going to act like a Republican and claim that I’ve always favored the filibuster.  What can I say?  Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.  I don’t think that Democrats will obstruct for its own sake the way Republicans have for the last eight years.  I don’t believe Democrats will use the filibuster, unless they can make their case to the American people that the action serves America’s needs.  I’m going to put my activism against the filibuster on hold as long as my activism against the kind of measures Democrats will filibuster is far more important for America than opposing the filibuster, but I won’t pretend that it isn’t an anachyronism, like the electoral college.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally, I’m a pretty straight shooter.  As much as I hate to admit it, what I have to say here is hypocritical, because I’m a long term opponent of the filibuster, and a long term proponent of the nuclear option.  That said, thank God for the filibastards. Gleeful Republicans see nothing standing in their way […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}