Filibuster
Written by Mike on April 29th, 2005There is a good reason Dick Morris is regarded as a political genius, because he is. He proves it in The Hill.
Teaser:
A filibuster would attract wide notice. Bring the cots into the Democratic and Republican antechambers and stage quorum calls throughout the night, as in the old days of civil-rights legislation, and the nation will notice. The Democrats will leave America to wonder why they are spending all of their time debating a judgeship in Mississippi when they are not addressing the problems of healthcare, energy, gas prices, the economy, Social Security reform and the preservation and expansion of Medicare. The endless debate over so minor an item will make the country disgusted and will expose all to the true perils of unbridled partisanship in Washington.
UPDATE:
Forgot to hat-tip my Dad who sent me this article.
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The problem you run into is that it would not simply wear down the D’s, but more it would wear down the R’s. To require the “cots out” filibuster, you would have to keep the legislative day from ending. This disadvantages the R’s because all the D’s have to do is ask if they have quorum. If they don’t, then the legislative day ends. To make that quorum call all the D’s need is a couple of people in the well of the Senate. For the R’s to defeat it, they would have to have their folks coming out of the woodworks at all hours of the night to cast votes to say they have quorum.
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That may be true, but I wish someone would pay me a Senator’s salary to work 80 hour weeks since I do that shit anyway. Those poor Senate Republicans, they might not get that much sleep! Why they might have to work as hard as the people who vote for them, my God, we can’t have this!
If it was up to me the cots would go down tonight and the war would begin. Will it be tough? Yeah, nothing great is easy to acomplish. Would it test some men and some Senator’s leadership skills to the breaking point? Yeah, but that is what they signed on for, not champagne and DC interns, but doing the hard work for their country, which I guess they love, though they haven’t done a whole hell of a lot to prove it to me over the years.
We have troops out in the middle of the desert getting eaten alive by sand flys and staying up all night on watch because some fanatic might drive a truck bomb through the permiter of his base camp. You think he is getting “worn down”? I understand this wouldn’t be a cake walk, but the D’s would have to hold the floor of the Senate or the Republicans could simply take control with 51 votes and pass a massive amount of legislation.
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