Posted on 11/22/2013 3:08:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
....Reid clinched support for changing the rules at the weekly Tuesday Senate Democratic caucus lunch.
.....Reid, without mentioning the colleague’s name, told his caucus that one of its senior members who had long opposed filibuster reform, recently had a change of mind and privately urged him to trigger the controversial tactic.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) then rose before the room full of Democrats and identified herself as the recent convert.
“She got up right afterward and said, ‘He was talking about me,’” said a Democratic senator.....
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not know if he had the votes to trigger the nuclear option at the start of last week.
A Democratic leadership aide said he had not yet conducted a whip count and an outside liberal group that worked closely with him to advocate for filibuster reform said he was short of the 50 votes needed.
Reid never told his colleagues when he surpassed the mark. He simply called for a vote on the floor. That’s when Democrats knew they were about to enact one of the biggest Senate rules changes in decades.
“I just assumed he would never take it to the floor unless he had the votes. He’s too shrewd a vote counter. He really knows the Senate,” said a Democrat senator.
Several Republican senators tried to patch together a deal in the final hours to avoid the nuclear option.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a well-respected centrist, said Republicans could agree to confirm one of President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals if Democrats agreed to let the other two languish and dropped the threat of the nuclear option, according to a source familiar with the talks.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Senate GOP’s principal dealmaker this Congress, urged Reid to consider it and other proposals instead of a rules change.
In the end, Reid said he would accept nothing less than confirmation of all three of Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit, the second most powerful court in the nation, which has primary jurisdiction over the Affordable Care Act.
Outside groups had worked for months to persuade Reid to curb the minority party’s power to filibuster nominees. But in the end, Reid worked largely alone. His decision to trigger the nuclear option — so dubbed because it’s viewed as a dramatic escalation of partisan tactics — caught them by surprise.
Two members of the Fix the Senate Now coalition predicted earlier this week that Reid would not try to eliminate the power to filibuster executive and sub-Supreme Court judicial nominees before the end of the year.
Reid clinched support for changing the rules at the weekly Tuesday Senate Democratic caucus lunch.
He opened the meeting with a passionate speech announcing his decision to move ahead with a unilateral change of the filibuster rule. His plan was to overturn a ruling of the presiding chair with a simple majority vote, an aggressive tactic that several senior members of his caucus had long opposed.
After months of Republican obstruction, which culminated in the shutdown of the federal government in October, even longtime skeptics of a sudden rules change were finally ready to curb the minority party’s power to delay.
“Harry made an impassioned plea,” said a Democratic lawmaker, who described Reid’s remarks as similar to what he delivered on the Senate floor Thursday. “He said this is where we’re headed.”
Speaking on the floor shortly before the momentous vote, Reid declared Thursday: “The American people believe Congress is broken. The American people believe the Senate is broken. And I believe the American people are right.”
Reid, without mentioning the colleague’s name, told his caucus that one of its senior members who had long opposed filibuster reform, recently had a change of mind and privately urged him to trigger the controversial tactic.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) then rose before the room full of Democrats and identified herself as the recent convert.
“She got up right afterward and said, ‘He was talking about me,’” said a Democratic senator.
Feinstein said she was dismayed that the informal agreement Senate Republicans and Democrats struck on nominees during a rare joint meeting in the Old Senate Chamber in July had quickly disintegrated.
“I spent three hours in the Old Senate Chamber with both parties. And I listened to the discourse, which was amiable,” she told reporters that day. “And we left, and I think we all felt good. And it lasted maybe one week or two weeks.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) also delivered a pivotal speech at the meeting, urging colleagues in his gravely baritone to set aside their concerns and follow Reid.
“Patrick just said, ‘I think it’s time we do this, I’m going to follow the leader,’” said a lawmaker who attended the meeting.
The lawmaker said Reid galvanized support when he made it clear to his colleagues that he had made a decision and was going to move forward.
“I don’t think we did [have the votes],” said the source. “Until he really pushes and he says, ‘I’m going to do this,’ and goes to individual senators, people are on the fence.”
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, made a last-ditch effort to divert Reid by proposing that Democrats hold another meeting with Republicans in the Old Senate Chamber, said two sources familiar with the meeting.
Too many Democrats had lost their patience with repeated Republican filibusters and roundly dismissed Levin’s proposal.
“That would have just been more window dressing,” said a Democratic source.
Levin told The Hill Thursday he dies not remember making such a suggestion at the private meeting.
“But I think it would have been a good idea,” he said.
Obama could have always recess appointed these judges but it wouldn't have made the headlines the way Reid did it.
Well said.
Is there not a quorum rule, then? If so, every “R” should refuse to show his face during such votes, Wisconsin-Style.
Another step closer to the end of our nation.
It's interesting that 10 democrats, who are in danger of losing their seats next year because of their support of ObamaCare in the first place! voted to support a fascist move to protect ObamaCare.
How will they explain that to their constituents?
...the race card wasn’t working.....it’s a wonder Hillary didn’t show up and faint with an unknown and undetected concussion
This is Reid’s attempt to create a prophylactic against Articles of Impeachment against Holder & Obama by packing the DC Court. If holder is impeached, will he bring down Obozo? Jail time for Holder? Would that change his loyalty?
The Nucular Option passed with 51 votes. The Senate Quorum requirement is - wait for it - 51.
They won’t. I think the ten have gone through the numbers and realize that it’s a lost cause. They are all going to give the administration the medicine it needed....a complete Republican-majority in the Senate, and House. They will sit back and be entertained by this administration in a zero-accomplishment two-year period. No one in the Senate believes the mess anymore.
Answer: bribery and blackmail, as always.
It took lies:
“................Some see these nominees as an effort to pack the court after a series of decisions Obama did not like.
The issue was similar last July when Reid and company convinced the Republicans to capitulate on President Obama’s terrible nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. In tricking the Republicans into approving numerous nominees the Democrats promised they were “not touching judges.”
Harry Reid (D-NV): “We’re not touching judges. That’s what they were talking about. This is not judges.” (NBC’s “Meet The Press,” 7/14/13)
Reid didn’t stop there. He made a similar promise at a Press briefing:
Harry Reid (D-NV): “We’re not talking about changing the filibuster rules that relates to nominations for judges. …this is not about judges.” (Sen. Reid, Press Briefing, 7/11/13)
Reid wasn’t alone in making such representations. Senators Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar also offered similar assurances:
Sherrod Brown (D-OH): “…I think any president should have the ability to put people in place for the — at the pleasure of the president. These are not judges. That’s a whole another issue.” (MSNBC, 7/9/13)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): “…I don’t understand why for these nominees, I’m not talking about judges here, I’m talking about the president’s team, of which there are currently over 180 people that are just pending right now before the Senate for the Executive Office nominations. Why we can’t just do 51 votes is beyond me.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 7/14/13)......
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3094125/posts?page=1
California has a track record of using the court to overturn elections.
It should be noted that Gang of Fourteen member Mary Landrieu voted to do away with cloture on judicial nominees which is a reversal of her agreement. If there is one Senator (besides Graham) that needs to be kicked out in the next election, it is her.
“...As Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the change in the rules governing executive nominations and lower-court appointments, his opponents cried tyranny, though they also promised that when they took power they would go further, applying the new standard to Supreme Court nominations. In other words, tyranny—but we promise we’ll give you more of it. The new rules fit with that kind of Senate.
...Whoever is ultimately at fault for the rule change—the Democrats who forced it or the Republicans who blocked the nominations requiring the new rules—the result is that the minority will have less power. That means elections will matter even more than they did before. Every Republican campaign now has more incentive to fight harder to win the six seats needed to take back the Senate in the 2014 election. Presidential elections now mean more, too. Reid’s move will secure Obama’s legacy because the new nominees to the appeals court will be in a position to protect his achievements. Moderate senators will hold more power. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor and Joe Manchin voted against the rule change. In the future, in a closely divided Senate, they are the kind of senators who will be the key vote to give or deny the majority their nominee. Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, also voted against the new rules, but he’s retiring, making way for another rookie. If the rookie is a Republican, one of his or her first tasks may be changing the rules again.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3094239/posts
Rush Limbaugh - November 21, 2013:
RUSH: I have a brief question for Senator McCain, Senator Susan Collins, and the rest. How is that “working across the aisle” thing working out for you now with this nuclear option thing? You stuck your hand out across the aisle to shake hands with ‘em, and now you gotta somehow reach around and take a knife outta your back.
Cruz: Dems want to pack court with judges to protect O-Care
"Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the Senate’s leading critic of the Affordable Care Act, denounced a vote Thursday to prohibit filibusters against appellate court nominees as a scheme to save the health law.
“The heart of this action is directed at packing the D.C. Circuit because that is the court that will review the lawless behavior of the Obama administration implementing ObamaCare,” he said.
“President Obama and the administration refuse to follow the plain text of the law, and the D.C. Circuit is the court of appeals that has been holding the administration accountable."
Cruz said the rule change, which passed Thursday with 50 Democratic votes, “was designed to pack that court with judges that they believe will be a rubber stamp.”
The vote to pass the rules change was 52-48, with the two independents, Sens. Angus King (Maine) and Bernie sanders (Vt.), voting with the Democrats and three Democrats voting against the change.
The addition of three Democratic-appointed judges to the 11-seat court will shift its ideological balance, which had been tilted to the right. This could have significant implications for the new healthcare law because the court has primary jurisdiction over many federal regulatory matters.........."
“............As Jamie Glazov, a student of the left, has observed in an article about the middle-class defenders of recently captured Seventies terrorist Kathy Soliah: “if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the ‘poor’ and the ‘downtrodden,’ then there will always be a ‘progressive’ milieu to support and defend you.” Huey Newton, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Bernardine Dorhn, Sylvia Baraldini, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Mumia Abu Jamal, H. Rap Brown, Rigoberta Menchu and innumerable others have all discovered this principle in the course of their criminal careers....
...But they are lying. When they defend racial preferences now, for example, a principle they denounced as “racist” and fought against as “civil rights” activists then, even they must know it.
The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity, and often, therefore, without realizing that they are. The necessity for lying arises because it is the political lie that gives their cause its life. ...
...If you believed that others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as part of a “vanguard.” You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the same horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the army of the saints.
That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a redeemer. To feel anointed. To be among the elect. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism of all.
That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in the process. That is why they don’t care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than any injustice they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their “mistakes,” why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth.
If you were active in the so-called “peace” movement or in the radical wing of the civil rights causes, why would you tell the truth? Why would you concede – even long afterwards — that no, you were never really a “peace activist,” except in the sense that you were against America’s war. Why would you draw attention to the fact that you didn’t oppose the Communists’ war, and were happy when America’s enemies won?
What you were really against was not war, but American “imperialism” and American capitalism. What you truly hated was America’s democracy, which you knew to be a “sham” because it was controlled by money in the end. That’s why you wanted to “Bring The Troops Home.” Because if America’s troops came home, America would lose and the Communists would win. And the progressive future would be another step closer.
But you never had the honesty – then or now — to admit that. You told the lie then to gain influence and increase your power to do good (as only the Chosen can). And you keep on telling the lie for the same reason.
Why would you admit that, despite your tactical support for civil rights, you weren’t really committed to civil rights as Americans understand the meaning of the term – as rights granted not to groups but to individuals, not by government but “by their Creator”)? What you really wanted was to overthrow the very Constitution that guaranteed those rights, based as it is on private property and the autonomous person – both of which you despise.
Since America is a democracy and the people endorse it, the left’s “progressive” agendas can only be achieved by lying to the people. The unenlightened must be kept ignorant until the revolution transforms them. The better world is only reachable through deception of the people who need to be saved............” - David Horowitz
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Progressive%20Narcissism.htm
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