MITCH McCONNELL UNDOES 213 YEARS OF U.S. HISTORY IN 33 MINUTES

…A Tom Toles political cartoon says it all

The Senate Leader makes another drastic historical move

Do you remember back when the US Senate was once referred to as: “The world’s greatest deliberative body,”?

Well, ever since Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate Leader (KY), after Barack Obama had won in 2008, McConnell declared his top priority was for President Barack Obama “to be a one-term president”.  Then, after McConnell killed the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 by refusing to act on it.  Let’s also not forget that between 2009 and 2013, McConnell’s Republicans blocked 79 Obama nominees with filibusters, and that compares with 68 in the country’s entire previous history.

After all that, no one is going to recognize the US Senate today as anywhere near being a true "deliberative organization" by any measures.

In addition, after the US Senate’s latest childish move, similar to a school-yard taunt of McConnell’s statement: “The Democratic leader started it all….”, then he added “He started the whole thing.”

And just what was McConnell referring too?

McConnell, with a very red face,  pointed to the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), saying, “He started the whole thing!” 

The Senate Majority Leader, in this latest move to seize more power, by dismantling one of the chamber’s centuries-old safeguards.  He then began pushing through another vote to break another Senate rule.  But as usual, he first just had to give a speech blaming the other side of the aisle.

And this “thing” that Chuck Schumer was the one who supposedly started it, you won’t believe the explanation of what “it” is.

That McConnell move, had more to do with the mindless one-upmanship of tribal partisanship.  This McConnell move was to reduce the right to delay or debate any consideration of judicial, or low-level executive nominees, from 30 hours to 2 hours.  This was a total McConnell “revenge” move due to Senator Schumer’s blocking of a nominee…….16 years ago. “Today, Sen. Schumer will reap what he sowed,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton (ARK) had the gall to declare on the Senate floor.

Senator Schumer just smiled and shook his head.

But McConnell had just undone 213 years of history in 33 minutes on one afternoon, holding a party-line vote to rewrite the US Senate’s rules of debate.

And it was actually, Vice President Aaron Burr that “started it”.  That being, the Senate tradition of unlimited debate.  That tradition has been the case, more or less in the Senate, since 1806. Over that time, senators had the right to delay votes on presidential nominees they found objectionable.

Even the political cartoonist, Tom Toles, did the appropriate thing with the above cartoon.

Both sides of the aisle have chipped away at this right to filibuster in recent years.

Democrats restricted it for circuit-court judges in 2013.  That was a move that some Dems have already come to regret.  Then, McConnell’s Republicans restricted it for Supreme Court justices in 2017.  But McConnell has now significantly escalated the restrictions by reducing the right to delay consideration of judicial or low-level executive nominees.  It’s clearly just a matter of time until this leads to the complete removal of the filibuster for everything, including legislation. This will further destabilize a federal government that has suffered many such blows during the past ten years.

And McConnell took this extraordinary step, called the “nuclear option,” on the minor matter of confirming an assistant secretary of commerce, who had no opposition. He did it even though the Senate has confirmed more appellate-level judges for Trump than for any president during his first two years in office.  That goes back to Harry S. Truman.

McConnell has a history of doing things for short-term tactical gains, regardless of the cost, as was his move to not allow the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland.

As usual, McConnell always blames his victims.  He sat on that Garland nomination for a year, because he said he knew “for absolute certainty” that the Democrats would have done the same.  And he’s taking away the filibuster because "Democrats made him do it"……what?

“He’s acting like it’s a sad day for the Senate. You want to pick a sad day for the Senate? Go back to 2003, when we started filibustering . . . and he started it,” McConnell said this of Chuck Schumer. “So, don’t hand me this sad-day-in-the-Senate stuff.”

McConnell then assured his Republican colleagues that “I don’t think anybody ought to be seized with guilt over any institutional damage being done to the United States Senate.”

This man will go down in history as one of the worst US Senate leaders….ever!

Copyright G. Ater 2019