When you were younger, did you ever know someone who, when presented with the itinerary for his/her selected group of friends, would stamp his/her feet, hold his/her breath, and adamantly refuse to do anything unless the plan was changed to meet his/her every specification? Someone who believed that compromise equaled “We’re doing it my way or we’re not doing anything?” Someone who always got his/her way just because it was easier than trying to reason with them? I would assume most of you did, and I would also assume that most of you found that person aggravating at best and downright loathsome at worst.
Who would have guessed that that child would grow up to become the entire modern Republican Party?
Yes, I did just compare an entire political party to a single spoiled, rancorous, unlikable child. Given the party’s platform and choice of action (read: inaction) for the last 22 months, I think it’s an apt comparison. Today’s GOP makes no pretence about their objective: their only interest is in regaining power, all others be damned. What’s the quickest way to regain power? Win elections. How do you win elections these days? Convince the electorate that the “other guy” is doing a lousy job. How best to do so? Ensure that nothing gets done, for if nothing gets done, then the people in charge must not be interested in working.
It’s a simple plan, and has been since Karl Rove laid it out following the GOP’s decimation in the 2008 election: make every bit of progress unbelievably difficult. The American public is, by and large, the laziest and dumbest electorate on the planet, and as such only knows as much about Congress as they saw on The West Wing or Schoolhouse Rock. When the public is clamoring for help and demanding action, they don’t know that one side is making even the tiniest issue an impossible mountain to climb; all they understand is that Congress is sitting on their rears not doing what the taxpayers pay them to do. It’s amazing how easily a lack of action can then be turned into a talking point: “The average American is in trouble, and what’s the Democratic Congress doing about it? Nothing!”
How did they accomplish this? How did they turn a public that overwhelmingly supported the Democrats following President Obama’s election into the most anti-incumbency electorate since the days of FDR? Simple: through arcane senatorial procedures and an unprecedented use of the filibuster. The filibuster has historically been used to prevent votes on controversial bills or to force further debate; while historically its use has been associated with preventing social progress, it can be a legitimate weapon for the minority to check the power of the majority and stop poor decisions from being made (as Senator Smith will attest). However, the Republicans now wield the filibuster like a fencer swinging a claymore. Anything and everything of any consequence in the Senate now requires a supermajority for passage, as the Republicans threaten requiring a cloture vote on every piece of legislation. This unprecedented use has slowed progress in the Senate to a crawl and even led to an unconscionable delay in unemployment benefits, the extension of which had never before been politicized in a time of recession. The only reason that benefit extension finally made it through the Senate is because Robert Byrd, whose illness had kept him from the Senate floor, died and his replacement was capable of providing the 60th vote. Maybe it’s just me, but when someone has to DIE for a bill to get passed, it would seem that there’s a fundamental flaw in the manner in which a governing body conducts itself.
The supermajority requirement is just the tip of the iceberg. Senate rules allow for senators to place holds on pretty much anything they want: presidential nominations, bills, steam trays in the Congressional cafeteria (joking about the last one, maybe). While an ordinary hold requires the senator to claim it and present a reason for the hold, secret holds allow any senator to do the same thing without claiming the hold or providing a reason for it for up to 6 days, at which point the senator must either claim it or release the hold. In a typical session of Congress, secret holds come up from time to time, again typically on more controversial matters (often times in the past they were used on controversial judicial nominees). In the current session of Congress, nearly every nomination has faced at least one secret hold, and some have faced multiple secret holds (in what some have dubbed “congressional roulette,” one senator can release their secret hold and have another secret hold be immediately placed on the same nomination by another senator). What’s worse is that nearly all of these holds are on nominees with completely noncontroversial backgrounds, nominees that came through committee with no dissent, nominees that ultimately are confirmed by sizable margins if not unanimously. Judicial vacancies are now at critical levels. Vital government departments are lacking the employees (and in some cases, the leaders) they need to function at full strength. The country becomes a little bit weaker every day that passes without these nominations making it through, and for what? The power to drive the country back off a cliff?
What bothers me the most, though, are the uses of bizarre, previously unused Senate conventions for the sole purpose of stopping anything from happening. For example, the Republicans have invoked on several occasions a never-before-used statute that requires the Senate, whenever there is not unanimous consent to continue, to halt all work and adjourn immediately. Think about that. The average daily session of the Senate starts somewhere between 9 and 10 AM. This rule forces the end of work in as little as 4 hours. Imagine trying that at your place of work, my readers, and then imagine the unemployment line you’d inevitably end up in. This has resulted in the delay and even cancellation of several important committee meetings, including at least one meeting of the Armed Services committee in which several major generals traveled half the length of the globe specifically to give testimony. Here we have an example of the party that allegedly are the only ones that can keep America safe from terrorists deliberately acting in a way to put America at risk. Why doesn't anyone call them on it?
I'm sure by this point some of you are wondering why, if the Republicans are so eager to regain power, they don't just present their own ideas to an increasingly skeptical and short-sighted public. To make a long story short, the answer is that they don't have any ideas. Just have a look at some of the amendments they proposed for the health insurance reform bill. Only two of those amendments weren't already covered in the bill, and neither had anything to do with the debate at all. How about having a look at their objections to Wall Street reforms? Each objection specifically targets an area that can be directly linked to aspects of the financial collapse and economic degradation of the last three years, and each objection could only benefit the fraudulent, irresponsible white collar criminal bankers whose high-risk, greed-soaked actions caused this whole mess in the first place. Or how about we look at the current House Minority Leader's economic plan? Immediate cutoffs of all stimulus spending, dramatic slashing of funding for federal programs across the board...sounds like a great way to kill any growth, no matter how small, that's come out of the last 12 months. But hey, at least we don't have to worry about taxes going up for the rich. That makes me feel so much better, because keeping taxes low on the rich has worked so well every time it's been tried for the last, oh, FOREVER (end sarcasm). No matter what the issue, the Republicans just don't have any viable answers to solve it. So what do you do when you don't have any ideas and want to win? You set up roadblocks to prevent your opponent from having any success. You drag everything out and fight tooth and nail to cripple or bury necessary legislation. You abandon any pretext of caring about your constituents for the sole purpose of scoring points with the corporate bigwigs that run your party and hope that the voters are too stupid to notice.
The most disgusting aspect of this? It's working. Polls suggest that the Republicans will most likely gain control of the House and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate substantially. This would appear to be irrefutable proof that the American public is, as I said before, the laziest and dumbest electorate on the planet. At the very least, it stands as a testament to what Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone calls "the American voter's unmatched ability to forget what happened to him 10 seconds ago." If there has ever been a greater indictment of how pathetic, how slothful, how unwilling to seek the truth we have become, I can't think of it. We are no longer a nation of free-thinkers, of knowledgeable human beings determined to do what's right for the good of the country. Now we are a nation that needs to be spoon-fed its opinion on everything, because learning the truth is hard work, and we stopped doing hard work a long time ago. Why waste time searching for the right answer when the ranting crying Mormon on the TV can tell me what the right answer is?
No more. We cannot continue like this. People constantly invoke the Founding Fathers to justify any crazy philosophy they have, be it on gun control or policing internet pornography. Well, there is one thing that the founders were undeniably, adamantly in favor of: a well-informed, rational, reasoning electorate. That's why I call on all of you to stop believing what you hear and find out for yourselves. Do the legwork and find out just how little these bullies have done to help us out of this quagmire. Dig a little deeper and see the roadblocks they've put in the way of national healing. Switch over to C-SPAN for a few minutes and watch these empty-headed goons go through the same talking points they've been harping on since last February. And for the country's sake, don't reward these spoiled brats on November 2nd for their constant threats to take their ball and go home.
These children need to be grounded. I implore you, America. Be smarter than this. Work harder than this. It's time to lay down some discipline.
