Posted on 02/08/2017 3:16:38 PM PST by Kaslin
In case you missed the Senate's overnight drama, Matt's explanatory post does a nice job of filling in the blanks. Basically, after being warned over violating a Senate rule in her speech impugning the character of Jeff Sessions -- who is still a sitting member of the upper chamber -- Elizabeth Warren continued her angry harangue unabated. As she leaned on the words of Coretta Scott King in order to effectively call Sessions a racist who's sought to disenfranchise black voters, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intervened. He invoked Rule 19, which prohibits any member from taking to the floor and “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” Warren was clearly doing precisely that. In a party-line vote, she was admonished to sit out the remainder of the debate over Sessions' nomination. A few thoughts on this, before we move on to another element of Rule 19 that may have more lasting relevance in the coming months or years:
(1) After being notified that she was on thin ice, Warren charged ahead and broke the rules. The Senate enforced its rules. Her ugly demagoguery was thus muted for a period of time.
(2) I understand that the "world's most deliberative body" ostensibly values comity and professional courtesy (though it's hard to tell these days), yet this rule strikes me as quite stupid. It's beyond dispute that Senators have routinely attacked the motives and character of others, with a certain recently-departed Senate leader making a sport out of slandering and badmouthing political opponents. That's all permissible under the rules, you see, but similar commentaries about a fellow Senator is forbidden. The rules are what they are, but I'm not sure this is a fair one -- or at least one that ought to be invoked to interrupt and shut down a floor debate except, perhaps, in truly extreme cases. I share Republicans' contempt for Warren's poisonous race-baiting (especially coming from a disgraceful racial impostor), but I'm not persuaded that quoting other people's recycled attacks on Sessions rises to the level of triggering this procedural reprimand. Separately, I lean toward favoring free-wheeling debate over presidential appointments in general; the selection of a Senator should not insulate that person from intense, or even unfair, criticism.
(3) The optics aren't good. Telling a woman to effectively 'sit down and shut up' as she quotes Coretta Scott King isn't a great look, regardless of the context (and I concede that the context matters here, just as I acknowledge that a great many voters will never hear it). Also, it makes Warren into a martyr, breathing life into her obnoxious heroine complex. Maybe the wiser approach would have been to forcefully dispute her premise and tactics through objections and replies. The counterargument, I suppose, is that Democrats were in the midst of a two-day character assassination festival, and some form of pointed retribution was deserved. Nevertheless, it drew far more attention to her speech than otherwise would have occurred. It feels like a tactical misstep.
In any case, that kerfuffle is over. But our scrutiny of the relevant, abstruse senate rule invoked by McConnell last night may only now be beginning. It is looking more and more as if SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch will receive an up-or-down vote after his confirmation hearings. But if Democratic opposition calcifies, or if a filibuster is mounted against a nominee to fill a potential second vacancy, Republicans may be forced to decide whether or not to follow through on the Reid Rule and Kaine Compact to "nuke" the filibuster. It's unclear whether McConnell would be able to marshall the requisite 51 votes to do so, even as President Trump applies external pressure to get it done. But Sean Davis, writing at The Federalist, points to an alternative plan that would (a) avoid further undermining the filibuster, (b) guarantee extended debate over a controversial nomination, and (c) eventually lead to a final vote. His idea derives from a separate portion of Rule 19. I'll let him explain the basics:
Rule XIX of the Standing Rules of the Senate plainly states that on any given question, a senator may speak only twice on the same legislative day. This clause is known in Senate parlance as the two-speech rule. No senator may speak more than two times on the same matter on the same legislative day...In simple terms, it means that once each senator has spoken twice on a matter, debate on that matter is concluded no matter what. It means that a final up-or-down vote is guaranteed. It does not preclude the Senate from invoking cloture before all senators have spoken twice, nor does it preclude the Senate from proceeding to a final vote in the absence of continued debate. Unlike the nuclear option, which kills debate instantly at the whim of the majority, enforcement of the two-speech rule effectively sets a limit on debate.
But if the "two speech rule" were invoked, wouldn't the "day" clock reset every 24 hours? No. Davis writes that the clear precedent is that a legislative day marks the period between gaveling into and out of a discrete session. On occasion, a single Senate legislative "day" has stretched on for weeks, including the famous episode in which the "two speech rule" was applied to the battle over the Civil Rights Act. Opponents of that bill, including many Democrats, were restricted to two floor addresses of unlimited duration apiece during that "day," which lasted 81 calendar days. Eventually the clock (and their stamina) ran out, and after an extraordinarily lengthy debate, votes proceeded. Davis argues that this same model can be applied to Supreme Court nomination disputes. One objection is that the country can't afford to have the Senate stuck on one topic for weeks on end. But that's a misplaced concern:
The Senate majority has the power to bounce back and forth between legislative and executive session at will. As a result, the Senate could conduct its legislative business during the day and confine debate over the pending presidential nomination to the wee hours of the night. Thus, not only would the Senate be able to dual-track its legislative and executive business, Senate Republicans would also have the power to force Senate Democrats to make their speeches in the middle of the night when nobody is watching.
Other business could be attended to during the day, while grandstanders would have to perform for the cameras very late at night. But they'd still get their say. Davis addresses additional questions from skeptics of this idea throughout the piece, and does so pretty convincingly. I suppose that one of my issues is that this does seem like an awfully complex maneuver to undertake, given that Democrats made it quite obvious that they were ready to once again hit the red nuclear button over SCOTUS picks under a Hillary presidency. If the other side telegraphs that they're going to escalate as soon as they're back in power, why not pre-empt them -- citing their own precedent -- to further your agenda? Why unilaterally surrender, especially when they've made their intentions plain? On the other hand, this proposal would theoretically achieve the important and laudable ends of falling short of blowing the whole thing up, permitting extraordinary extended debate in accordance with Senate tradition, and likely striking Republican members who seem reluctant to finish what Harry Reid started as more palatable. Again, I suspect that Neil Gorsuch won't attract 41 Senators willing to sustain a filibuster. But Trump's next selection, if an opening should present itself, very well could. Last night's events demonstrate that Mitch McConnell has granular knowledge of the regulations that govern the body he leads. One would imagine, therefore, that he's already taken Davis' proposed scenario into consideration. If he views the idea as a viable option, it may be smart to start laying the groundwork among his caucus in advance of its hypothetical implementation.
They weren’t citizens yet so there was nothing to prohibit deportation, other than lack of will. I don’t think it was any more impractical than kidnapping their ancestors in the first place, you gather them up and put em on ships, and I don’t see how it could have worked out worse than what actually happened, they being second class citizen for another century and currently being, for the most part, a poor underclass who’s problems plague larger society.
The beauty part and indeed the point would be that once there were gone they would no longer be our problem. If Liberia ended up not working out for them too well, tough, their destiny would be in their own hands alone. Harsh perhaps and any Black freepers reading this might want to smack me but my POV on this is look out for number 1, our Republic and it’s short and long term well being. As said, neither North nor South wanted free Blacks around.
Another alternative posited by DJ once IIRC was give them some land out west to form their own states.
I wonder how Keitt would have liked it if I held a gun on him to prevent his interference while my friend violently beat his father or someone he liked half to death. He might think it a crime.
He deserved his censure and far worse.
As for Burlingame, sounds like BROOKS challenged him to a duel but wussed out like the chickenbleep loser he was when he heard Burlingame was a good shot. What a loser.
Repatriation to Africa was one avenue Lincoln considered, but it was far too impractical by then. There was no way to logistically work out sending millions of Blacks back across the Atlantic en masse. Even if there were enough ships to move them, what then once in Africa ? You’d need supplies and other resources. Housing, food, et al.
You can’t just drop a group of people that large and say, “OK, provide for yourself starting now.” It would’ve been a disaster. The immigrants would’ve turned into marauders and killed the local populations just to get their food and other resources. Even if you had sent back, say, 100,000 per year, that would’ve taken 50 years to send back just the number of Black Americans as of 1870. By 1920, they’d have already replaced their numbers in America (10.5 million).
Even as early as 1800, when they surpassed a million, it was already impractical. In the early 1700s when there was around 30,000 was probably the cut-off point of practicality. Then you could’ve relocated them to islands in the Caribbean, rather than send them all the way back to Africa.
Recall it was Frederick Douglass who advised President Lincoln on this subject, and he laid out the impracticalities on the subject of repatriation. Lincoln did not pursue the matter any further as a result.
This left other alternatives as possible redress for ex-slaves. One was breaking up plantations in the south and redistributing them (i.e. 40 acres and a mule). That was punitive to White Southerners and would’ve resulted in mass retributions (read: mass murders) as they would’ve sought to get their lands back at any cost. That left the other alternative of perhaps designating the state of Kansas and parts of the OK Territory or even Oregon as explicitly Black states, requiring the removal of White settlers (unless they chose to stay under the new reorganization), as these were only recently settled areas (roughly about 20 years). Granting the aforementioned land, animals, and setting up public schools for both adult and child alike. Allowing these state(s) to be self-governed by Black elected officials without D.C. interference or attempts to reclaim the land on behalf of Whites. Some level of autonomy and protection. Any and all success (or failures) squarely upon them from that point onward.
It would’ve been a curious experiment to watch in the era before public welfare, I think it would’ve succeeded to a degree. Where it would’ve faltered later would’ve been the Depression and natural desires of the population to move about the country in search of better opportunities. I noted in the case of some isolated towns that were farming communities that were mostly or all-Black, many declined in the Depression era and afterwards and never recovered.
So, in the end, there was no magic cure, no panacea for how to deal with the slave problem and their freed descendants and putting them on a surefire path to success and total self-reliance.
In the end, had Sumner chosen to attack the institution of slavery instead of taking cheap, vicious, personal shots at a fellow Senator, one that he didn’t have the common courtesy of facing, the entire incident would never have occurred.
Personally, I think he was looking for trouble and getting his ass kicked. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
President Grant had a different strategy for integrating freedmen into American society: creating an escape valve that would for e Southern whites to cease all violence agsinst blacks lest they no longer have a cheap source of labor for their agricultural production. This was one of the reasons why Grant supported an annexation treaty with the Dominican Republic (whose president had southt annexation by the United States in order to protect his country from invasion be Haiti or by a European power) that would establish a Territory of Santo Domingo and promised eventual statehood. Grant and Frederick Douglass (who advised Grant as he had Lincoln) believed that the Dominican Republic, with its mulatto-majority polulation and ample land, was a possible destination for blacks seeking to leave the South, and that Southern whites would be forced to disband the KKK and repeal the Black Codes if they wanted to stop blacks from leaving. We’ll never know if it would have worked because the treaty was defeated in the Senate thanks to its opposition from Senator Charles Sumner (who had recovered from his injuries caused by the cowardly Congressman Brooks). Sumner believed that annexing an independent creole republic would undermine the efforts to create other such republics in the Americas and would not be conducive to ending slavery; Grant, on the other hand, believed that the annexation of Santo Domingo would result in Spain ending slavery in its remaining colonies (Cuba and Puerto Rico) and Brazil ending slavery as well. One if the great “what-ifs” of history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Santo_Domingo
Sorry for the fat-finger typos in my post; I wrote it on my iPhone.
A cursory review of that proposal seems like it would’ve been a fiasco more than a benefit. Going that route may have launched us on a trajectory to annex more and more in the Caribbean and perhaps even into Central and South America (which, ironically, was a plan by the Confederate Government to expand into slaveholding areas).
Add to that, annexing Santo Domingo would’ve saddled us with the added burden of perennial basketcase Haiti and all of its domestic problems. Of course, Haiti would probably be happy to be annexed by us, and that would provide its residents to leave it en masse for the mainland.
By “Santo Domingo,” they meant the Dominican Republic (whose capital was, and is, named Santo Domingo), the former Spanish colony in the eastern part of the Island of Hispaniola. Haiti (the former French colony of Saint Domingue), which is on the western half of the island, would have remained an independent republic. And as for whether it would have led to further expansion into the Caribbean and Central America, that’s highly speculative.
I don’t know how things would have turned out had Grant’s Dominican Republic plan been enacted, but a century of Jim Crow didn’t turn out so great, and deportation to Africa would have been an unmitigated disaster.
Haitians likely would've flooded the border (a la Mexico) to flee the perennial quagmires, be it political or natural disasters, and the island as a whole, would've been a neverending source of problems to our nation. Language and culture would've been at odds as well, barring a mass-scale program of Anglicizing the Spanish Dominicans and Francophone Haitians.
Neat, I never knew about that.
Could have been big for baseball. ;d
“I noted in the case of some isolated towns that were farming communities that were mostly or all-Black, many declined in the Depression era and afterwards and never recovered.”
Looking at Dave Leip’s Map I noticed this township in
Kankakee County IL that went heavily for Shillery.
Pembroke Township, turns out it’s a world famous craphole, rural Black population, lousy sandy soil, it’s been called a “pocket of the deep south”. No paved roads, no gas, probably no wi-fi. A few politicians used it for photo-ops but never really helped much.
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