Bipartisanship is DEAD, and the GOP Killed It
 |
| Source: Steve Sack - Star Tribune |
With legislation before the Senate, which includes the For The People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the administration’s infrastructure bill, there is an expressed desire for bipartisanship in passing this legislation. President Biden has stated that he is seeking bipartisanship on these issues, but qualified that search for bipartisanship in saying, “Inaction is simply not an option”.
Others, having a more absolutist bent, seek bipartisanship at any
cost. Key among these voices is Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). He steadfastly
refuses to support the elimination of, or changes to, the Senate Republicans
weapon of choice…the filibuster. But more on this later. After the failure of
any Republican in either the House or Senate to vote in favor of the COVID 19
Relief Act of 2021, Donald feckin’ Trump’s SECOND impeachment, and the bloody insurrection
of 1/6//2021 that led to that second impeachment, we can conclude that
bipartisanship is dead.
Led by Senator Mitch (aka “Moscow Mitch”) McConnell (R-KY), Senate
Republicans are offering nothing but obstruction of President Biden, his agenda,
and the will of the American people. And they’ll use the filibuster to do it.
This is because the filibuster , as it now stands, incentivizes a cohesive
minority party to block any piece of legislation from the majority party, regardless
of how much support it has from voters (Hacker & Pierson, 2021). And
the reason Mitch and his GOP lackeys are so enamored of the filibuster is because
it stops cold Democratic efforts to enact “popular elements of their agenda,
feeds public discontent with the party ostensibly in charge, and fuels the
anti-government extremism that now animates the GOP base” (Hacker & Pierson, 2021, para. 6).
Changes to, or elimination of the filibuster are opposed for any
number of reasons, but mostly because it is mistakenly held to be in the
original rules established for the Senate…when it really wasn’t. The sad fact
is that it was a mistake. A mistake going all the way back to 1805 when a rule
allowing a simple majority to cut off debate was mistakenly dropped form the
Senate rule book (Binder, 2021).
And while there are claims of racist intent behind the creation of the
filibuster, there is no evidence to support this. It was, however used by senators
for southern states in a more than century long effort to kill federal civil
rights legislation (Jacobson, 2020).
And, now, we come to Joe Manchin. Joe has repeated all of the
mistaken assumptions about the filibuster in his defense of it, even to the
point of claiming to be defending the late Senator Robert Byrd’s legacy. Given
that Byrd used the filibuster in an effort to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
Joe needs to ask himself if that’s a hill he’s willing to die on. In his recent
editorial in the Washington Post, he claims it to be “a critical tool to
protecting that input and our democratic form of government” (Manchin, 2021, para. 3), which it
never has been. He also whines about efforts to limit or eliminate the
filibuster as threatening the “regular order in the Senate” (Manchin, 2021, para. 8). This,
however, was done by Moscow Mitch when he refused to bring Merrick Garland’s Supreme
Court nomination to committee, never mind the floor of the Senate.
No. Republicans don’t want bipartisanship. They aren’t even engaging
in the pretense of negotiation with the White House or Senate Democrats. They’re
simply lobbing flaming bags of dogshit at whatever agenda item the Democrats
bring before the Senate. They are content to be triple-dipped in crazy
conspiracy theorists and seditionists who have abandoned the pretense of
governing and governance to do whatever it takes to get their way, even if it
means killing any legislation that might help Americans as we recover from the
worst pandemic since 1918, rebuild our infrastructure or ensure the rights of
ALL Americans to their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.
No boys and girls, there will not be even a hint of bipartisanship
from the Senate GOP. They will use the filibuster, or any other tool that may
come into their hands, as a bludgeon against Democratic efforts to begin
repairing the damage done by the orange-hued shit-gibbon aka Donald feckin’
Trump. And, the GOP hopes to ride back into control of the House and Senate on the wave of discontent, disillusionment and frustration with the gridlock they created (Cooper, 2021). And they will if they are not stopped.
As it stands now, bipartisanship is a pipe dream. It’s time for
people…like Joe Manchin (D-WV)…like Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to remember that “D”,
for ":Democrat” after their names, put down the opium pipe and do their jobs in supporting
the White House agenda for the good of ALL Americans.
References
Comments
Post a Comment