Posted on 11/14/2014 3:30:59 AM PST by Kaslin
Serious question: Did Senate Democrats somehow miss or forget about the elections we had last week? Wow:
Senate Democrats voted on Thursday to keep Senator Harry Reid of Nevada as their leader, but his victory came only after a nearly four-hour closed-door meeting in which 28 caucus members expressed their frustration with the party’s direction after an Election Day drubbing. The voting was done by secret ballot, but it was not unanimous, reflecting a divide within the party over the need to elevate new faces and younger leaders. Those concerns were reflected in part in the decision Thursday to create a new but relatively small leadership role for Senator Elizabeth Warren, 65, of Massachusetts, a folk hero of the left.
“When you have an election like this, common sense says we need to change things,” said Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, one of the Democrats who did not vote for Mr. Reid. “The voice was very loud and unmistakable,” she added. “To me that means changing leadership, and it was just that simple.”
I’ll be the first to say that the guy deserves some credit. He presided over a largely ineffectual and gridlocked Senate chamber, gutted the filibuster (a power-grabbing procedure he once inveighed against), and tabled hundreds of bills passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, thus relegating his Senate colleagues to a kind of legislative purgatory. Through it all, however, he still managed to keep his leadership position. Well done, Harry. I'll tip my cap to you. (Then again, there was never any serious challenge to his reign of power. Amazing.)
Be that as it may, now that Senate Democrats have re-elected their intrepid leader–despite the clear wishes of the American public–perhaps we can take some solace in his greatly-diminished status and waning influence. It is richly deserved.
Harry knows where all the bodies are buried!
I’m very glad that the Demos are represented by this openly nasty old man and in the House, by the ancient airhead Nancy Pelosi. Stuck in the past, failed ideas, unattractive personalities, I want them to be the ugly, aged faces of the Democratic Party.
That’s basically it.
Get rid of him and everything comes out in the open.
Indeed laconic, I hope they carry that recipe for disaster forward for the next decade.
What the Republicans SHOULD DO, but will not do, is kill off the filibuster for everything.
And they should base that decision on the fact that Reid has shown that he will not let ANY BILL move that he disagrees with. He has broken the “comity” of the Senate (that term might help with getting McCain on board) and until he is no longer their leader, he needs to be effectively stripped of power.
When your opponent is shooting himself in the foot, stand back and watch. Reid and Pelosi maintaining their leadership poisitions is like a gift that keeps on giving.
I’ve got to give them this, they have Party discipline like Lenin’s Bolsheviki....
I'm calling Boehner's and Portman's offices today (just so they can't claim "nobody said anything") and pointing out that "shutting down" the federal government obviously did not cost them an election! They should put that back on the table.
I’ve got mixed feelings on that. Some day the Rats will control the Senate again. If they have the House and the President imagine the damage they could do with thin majorities of both chambers of Congress....
BUMP! Reid and Pelosi. Who could ask for better poster children for the Democrat’s future?
I disagree. The filibuster has its place. However, it should be limited to real, stand up and blab endlessly, filibusters, rather than the Pelosi-esque filibusters that are silently "deemed" a filibuster.
That way, at lest the public knows something is up, and maybe educate themselves on the conflict. If an issue is important enough to filibuster, the senator should be willing to withstand ridicule in order to proceed.
All said, however, they should dispense with the filibuster for those items that UNDO the damage that Reid wrought with dispensing it. That way, Reid's damage can be undone, while the filibuster itself is restored.
Harry knows where all the bodies are buried!
And, now is the time to BURY harry along with all the other bodies.
DITTOS. . . .
If it's that important, then there should be a Constitutional amendment requiring the assent of 60% of the U.S. Senators for any Federal bill to become a law.
The Democrats are a Soviet style Party-no opposing voices allowed.
It wasn’t the first time voters were ignored, nor will it be the last. It’s the Democrat Way.
“All said, however, they should dispense with the filibuster for those items that UNDO the damage that Reid wrought with dispensing it. That way, Reid’s damage can be undone, while the filibuster itself is restored.”
That’s not a bad idea...I too am a bit nervous at getting rid of it, but I also don’t want Reid to lock up the Senate again, which he will do if he has unrestricted use of the filibuster.
The difference between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell is that Reid will do a better job of obstructing Obama’s policies.
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