Someone should ask Senator Sumner what he thinks of this.
Posted on 01/18/2011 12:24:16 PM PST by markomalley
When did members start sitting by party during the State of the Union?
As with most everything concerning the State of the Union, the congressional seating chart has a lot to do with tradition.
Political parties have been sitting separately in Congress since the 1840s, according to the Congressional Research Service. The custom held during presidential speeches as well.
Back then, Whigs sat to the left of the speaker and Democrats to the right. Swap Republicans for Whigs and you have the current seating tradition.
Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plan to break with the norm by sitting together during this year's speech, an effort on their part to promote bipartisanship in the wake of the deadly shooting in Arizona.
We don't know yet where they will sit.
Aside from seats reserved for the Senate in the front of the House chamber and those for leadership, seating remains first come, first serve — as it has been for most of Congress' history.
In the past, members living around D.C. often got the best spots by arriving early to stake out.
And that is yet another tradition that remains alive and well today.
YOU GOT IT!!!
Rush took it to the level of absurdity with which the Repubs were duped (?) again by saying if the Dems had won such a sweeping victory & the Repubs proposed such a ludicrous idea, the Dems would have responded with...”lol, You should be grateful we are letting you attend the SOTU.”
FREEPERS: We have so much work left to do.
AND, don’t miss yefragetuwrabrumuy’s post #38:
The Bolshevik communists used a technique called “the diamond formation” to conceal the fact that their numbers were few, and to make it appear that the crowd as a whole supported communist speakers.
They would very intentionally sit in a diamond pattern within a crowd, then when the communist spoke, they would leap to their feet, applauding and cheering. And no matter where someone outside of the crowd looked, it would appear that the crowd was enthusiastically backing the communist speaker.
Don’t think for a moment that the Democrats don’t know about this, and aren’t thinking about this, either.
Their numbers are much diminished, and the national audience should see this, but by intermingling with Republicans they can try to create the illusion that they are numerous.
Likewise, remember what happened at the last SOTU? A Republican yelled out “YOU LIE!” at Obama, and the cameras turned on him. And no other Republican was doing anything to argue with him, or disagree with him. Imagine how different that would have been if there were Democrats seated next to him?
And you can bet your bottom dollar that this time, there will be.
You are not going to see pictures showing the Democrats standing on their feet and applauding, while the Republicans just sit there. Instead, with intermingling, it will look like at least some of the Republicans agree with what he is saying.
Any Republican who joins in this farce should be shunned for being a dummy, and the Republican leadership that permitted this should be challenged in their future leadership.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I only would add:
“Any Republican who joins in this farce should be shunned for being a dummy”
OR, a collaborator.
Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Interesting couple. :) I thought Coburn was a 100 percent conservative. This year has been mixed I believe (2010). I mean I know thank God he is pro-life still but somethings he has been wavering on or is that just basically speaking and not actual bills.
Videotape of the event shows Alito wincing, then apparently saying, “that’s simply not true.” Directly behind Alito, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Senate Democratic Caucus vice chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the second and third ranking Democrats in the Senate, gleefully took to their feet and cheered as Alito and the five other justices in attendance remained seated, looking uncomfortably intimidated. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2659189/posts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCcWuG2LO3E
I respect Senator Coburn but this is PC rubbish. Honestly. Does no one remember what a partisan tone was set by President Pinhead himself when he dissed the SUPREME COURT justices whose judgement he disliked. I will follow their decision (Scalia, Thomas, Alito) to not attend this year and won't watch this travesty.
Supreme Court Justice Alito Plans to Skip Next State of Union Address
So on which side is the happy couple going to sit?
How about seating the Obamanoids in Kenya or maybe Gaza, and have a telekon?
Amen.
THIS is the proverbial “Lie Down with Dogs and you’ll get fleas’....Coburn will NEVER be the same.....couldn’t he have found someone not so DIRTY as Schumer to sit with?? Egads....what a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!
I believe we are in for two years of dissappointments .
I hope I am wrong.
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