Posted on 03/23/2017 8:11:43 AM PDT by PghBaldy
As the Senate Judiciary Committee was hearing from witnesses for and against Judge Neil Gorsuch, his Supreme Court nomination was delivered a critical blow: Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would join with other Democrats in filibustering Gorsuch — a move that would require at least 60 senators to vote to end debate on the nomination.
The path to abandoning the filibuster was started on by Reid. In my view, it will be fully abandoned in time.
The filibuster was never a constitutional requirement. But it is a major plank in preserving the government in the form of a Republic rather than a mob-ruled democracy.
The original constitutional provision for preserving a republican form of government was set aside by the 17th Amendment. The long venerated Senate filibuster was to serve in preserving the unique role of the Senate in the era of the 17th Amendment.
Just to be clear, the phrase ‘republican form of government’ does not mean a government of republicans. Many republicans are actually democrats posing as republicans.
Republic means ‘Rez Publica’ or ‘Rule of Law’. A ‘republican form of government’ means a government governed by ‘Rule of Law’, not a mob.
Democracies from the time of ancient Greece are known to devolve into mobs. That’s why they fail.
The Founders designed a hybrid Democratic-Republic. The elections were to be democratic. The House was to be the symbol of the nation’s democracy. The Senate was to preserve the Republic.
The 17th Amendment took away the Senate’s role in preserving the Republic leaving only the filibuster to preserve it. Unfortunately, Harry Reid started the Senate down the path of destroying the filibuster. The long-term consequences of his precedent making action is a loss of the Republic in favor of a mob-ruled democracy.
See #129 for the antidote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3537360/posts?page=129#129
Nuke ‘em now. And when it comes time to fill future SCOTUS seats, nuke the hell of them, too. Who do they think they are? Do they think they have power? Do they not know they’re a pathetic group of geriatric losers?
It’s no longer Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
About the only way to deal with them and make progress.
The chaos the dems are causing further demonstrates how close we are to learning the truth about everything.
The intel community is not going down without a fight. They may not even go down but they are going to be severely damaged.
Let them fili and then replace him with a right-wing sh!tlord? I like how you think.
If it ever was.
The idea that a senator should be some kind of grand statesman is ridiculous. The founders had it right. A senator should be someone who is hired by his state legislature and fully responsive to the needs of his state.
> “The 17th amendment is what I think really screwed the Senate up. Repealing it would do much for restoring the Senate and our government to what it should be.”
Yes.
Note that to repeal it, the voting public must agree and their agreement is secured by changing their role from hiring to firing. The voters can vote them out but they can’t vote them in.
> “I suspect that doing nothing and then just taking what you know is coming is not in accordance with founding principles either. I do not see any nobility in doing nothing and letting democrats screw republicans on nuking the filibuster first. The filibuster is just a Senate rule that can be changed at any time.”
I understand. This situation has evolved over many decades in parallel with a debasement of the culture.
I do not know what McConnell will do. He has said that Gorsuch will be confirmed. We will see.
I was hoping they’d go straight for the nuke option, anyway. I would not trust any democrats who committed to vote for Gorsuch not to pull their vote at the last minute and deny a 60 vote total.
Just go for the majority win rules at the outset. Then if some conscience bound democrat wants to join in, then by all means vote for Gorsuch.
“I just wonder why schumer would say that knowing about the nuclear option.”
Because when the media is on your side, you can say anything and be protected. Trump should simply tweet something to the effect of the left has gone full Marxist as indicated by his two Muslim bans being overturned by leftwing justices.
Then, as a gift to Schumer, Trump should break up the 9th into 3 districts and then put originalist justices there.
> “... however enforcing the law is never extreme.”
True in that context. The context referred to was an ‘unrelenting’, ‘no holds barred’ approach.
Americans overwhelmingly approve of enforcing the law. So this approach to bringing democrats and the republicans on their side to heel will win because the public will be behind the President. That’s why it must be done.
President Trump is facing the same trap as his predecessors, that in forming his government he is trying to persuade his enemies to lay down their weapons. But I believe this President is different. We will see.
Your view of the state of the filibuster is spot on correct. The social view of the filibuster has evolved in tandem with a debasement of the popular culture.
As Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream of the popular culture”.
That is why we must resort to my tagline with an antidote as illustrated in #129:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3537360/posts?page=129#129
Wrong. The Democrats will NEVER use the nuclear option. All their President would have to do is nominate a minority, a woman or a homosexual and the Republicans would never dare filibuster them, regardless of how rabidly liberal they were. The Republicans are cowards and wouldn't be caught dead defending their country or conservatism if it mean they might be called names.
You’re right. I should have figure that one out.
I LOVE THAT IDEA!
I thought an idea was floated to avoid the nuclear option by calling the vote for Gorsuch a single legislative day. That would mean that each Senator is limited to two speeches in one legislative day. Therefore, cloture is forced after each Senator has spoken twice or no more Senators rise to speak.
There is no filibuster because there is no cloture vote. Cloture is called automatically because no more debate is possible.
-PJ
That legislative day thing was always stupid.
Each Senator can offer either amendments to a bill, or raise a point of order. Each of either is entitled to 2 speeches during the day from each Senator. There are no limits on points of order.
It doesn’t work and never did. You have to look into the 2 speech rule to understand all this crap from people.
It doesn’t stop a filibuster. Cloture does.
BTW all the other crapola about “The Dems would never hesitate to use the nuclear option” was proven false when they had to accept Obamacare rather than the single payer plan they wanted.
Only the Filibuster prevented that.
I like this no-nuke strategy. Let the Dems filibuster. While that continues. Trump holds rallies in the states where those 10 Dem senators live until the filibuster stops.
If he gets to ten, then push the button.
> “There is nothing constitutional about a filabuster.”
Entirely true.
> “It was a creation of the Slaver representative John C. Calhoun to prevent any laws affecting slavery. It is and has always been despicable.”
Not substantially accurate. The filibuster was a social norm of adversity to mob rule. It was established in the form of a gentlemen’s agreement in BOTH the House and the Senate. It was abandoned in the House because the number of members of the House kept increasing.
The recent ongoing debasement of the culture over the previous decades has culminated in eviscerating many tenets of ‘gentlemanly behavior’. The standards have been lowered so much that actions by men are now eating away at the form of government the Founders left us. Abandonment of the filibuster is but one symptom of a more widespread disease.
Total abandonment of the filibuster leads to mob-based rule. It leads to the historically known design failure of pure democracy.
The age-old question that teachers and professors of history ask their students is “Why have democracies always failed?”.
The answer is that democracies of every era, ancient and contemporary, have always failed because they devolve into mobs. A government subject to a Rule of Law stops or impedes this devolvement.
Fortunately, Colonel George Mason, a close friend and fellow Virginian of General George Washington, wisely foresaw the events we see unfolding today and provided a way to roll back the corruption by insisting on a rewording of Article V of the Constitution that stands today.
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