Nuke the filibuster (redux)
The Big Anon has commented: “As for Trump, I have lost interest in him. I find nothing in him.” And also: “As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve lost all interest in President Trump. I do not think he is a wise person.” The president’s latest tirade underscores the Big Anon’s point and I’m moving in the same direction. All the shouting, cursing, ranting, threatening, bellicosity, flip-flopping and TACO stuff is wearing me down. I don’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I have Trump Fatigue Syndrome.
The president is back on his kill-the-filibuster rampage. In a pair of late-night posts on Truth Social, he wrote: “It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option — Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” And: “Well, now WE are in power, and if we did what we should be doing, it would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous, Country destroying ‘SHUT DOWN.'”
He went on: “If Senate Republicans don’t TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, the Dumocrats will, and I will be, despite how well our Party is doing, the last Republican President. The Dumocrats will vote in Puerto Rico (4% Republican Vote), and Washington, D.C. (3% Republican Vote), pick up 4 Senators, 8 Congressmen/women, tremendous numbers of Popular and Electoral College Votes and, importantly, control the Voting Mechanisms and Systems, both Legal and otherwise, throughout the United States. It will be impossible for Republicans to ever win an Election again. In other words, it will be THE END OF AMERICA! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Excuse me? As per usual, the president is out of control. This is (pardon me) dumb and ranks right up there with his pronouncements on trade. For some reason, the president has pushed all his chips into the middle of the table to save the SAVE Act. I won’t burden you with another analysis of the bill, but the president is assuming that if the filibuster went away, the act would pass. He’s wrong. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis have all openly opposed it. So if only one more republican – Rand Paul – joined them the bill would not pass. Trump doesn’t have the votes. The president is obviously math-challenged.
What’s more, the democrats are playing the “please don’t throw me in the briar patch” game. They act as if they oppose ending the filibuster, when in fact they’re cheering Trump on. The democrats know, and Senate republicans know too, that without the filibuster, the next time democrats hold the trifecta of House, Senate and presidency, they’ll enact everything Trump warns about. Why can’t the president see this? Killing the filibuster now just to pass the SAVE Act would bring about the very future he’s predicting: statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, repeal of the SAVE Act and democratic control of the voting systems.
Senate republicans understand this, and most will defy the president on it. Majority Leader John Thune has said as much: “At some point, Democrats may try and steal the car, but we’re not going to hand them the keys. We would enable all the crazy stuff they would do, whether it’s adding Puerto Rico and D.C. as states, whether it’s federalizing elections, or packing the Supreme Court.”
So why does the president want to nuke the filibuster. It is one of the few instruments that encourage bipartisanism. Please tell me the president isn’t this stupid.
John Thune said what? The Dems will do something crazy, like Federalize the elections and make Puerto Rico a state? Does he know about the argument about who oversees elections? (Trump).
Has he heard of Trump —and Alberta/ all of Canada statehood?..
Of course , any Congressional action is a party vote..
Trump should have a warning label like cigarettes. My deceased aunt, in her last days , would have FOX on two !! televisions, screaming ‘ yeah yeah you tell em, Trump.’ She chose that incessant fearful anti- Dem life, and if still alive, would have cast her vote the man..
About US presidents: they are all the same. I thought the ‘W’ was different , but in “America Unbound”..
..” The President’s inherent powers as commander in chief made
( Congressional votes on 9/11 & Gulf War Resolutions ) unnecessary…
In early September , however, ( Geo W Bush ) called for a congressional vote… he and his advisors recognized …a win-win situation…
…”The political climate made it almost certain that Congress would vote for a war. If the Democrats oppose the war , they would hand the Republicans yet another issue in the upcoming congressional elections…” p.97…
At least Bush believed ( according to the book) , he was giving Middle Eastern people the chance to be free, have democracy, build capitalism.
Trump just wants a Republican midterm victory.
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Note: This is from a reader who is obviously deeply concerned about the state of the presidency.
I appreciate your candor in today’s post. I agree with the stand you take on the filibuster and with the included negative commentary about the president generally. So, here is my beef. And it is directed less at you and more at the American public–and specifically registered Republicans.
My husband and I are both Republicans. So was my father. My parents met at a local Republican Club meeting in New York. My father died four years ago. But he had the chance to vote in two presidential elections in which DJT was a candidate. None of the three of us ever voted for DJT. My father’s reason was simple (and this is close to a quote): “He is not a Republican. He is a lying, cheating, womanizer. I cannot vote for someone with such poor judgment.” My dad’s words echo in my ears a lot. That happened when I read your post today. I have stronger words than my dad had based on my longer track record in watching DJT.
The current president makes me sick to my stomach. He has feathered his own nest and that of family and friends in ways that are unbecoming to a public servant charged with leading a nation. (Some may or should be unlawful, too.) He lacks intelligence and reasoning ability. He surrounds himself with advisors that lack intelligence but have loyalty to him, and they are gone (leaving voluntarily or involuntarily) once they cease being loyal. As a result, we have lost institutional memory that feeds decision making in tough moments. These loyalists exist in the federal and state governments and in the voting public at large.
And so my largest frustration is with the sycophants (or believers) that slavishly follow DJT–a bunch of lemmings ready to follow him over the cliff. (I can only hope that they are sycophants and that they are insincere in their fawning and voting. But I do not know that.) I have turned away from party politics because they are meaningless to me. They used to stand for principled, distinguishable policy objectives. Now, neither major political party is principled or holistically policy-driven. Those controlling the platforms merely collect the issues-based views of their base and endorse them. I now vote for the best candidate based on judgment and problem-solving skills–more about how they reason through issues than where they stand on them. So, blind party voting truly troubles me. But that’s not all.
Neither party nor few candidates have looked at the hot-button issues deeply, understanding future effects, etc. For them, it is all about the here-and-now and pandering to a crowd on a specific issue to be elected to satisfy your ego. I know people who are intelligent but supported DJT only because he stood up for Israel and the Jewish people or only promised to appoint judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade. I cannot abide by that. A president has an important, multifaceted job to do. He is the manager of all the national federal political managers; the political leader of all the leaders. Instrumentalist voters focused on only one issue (or a narrow band of issues) fail to take that into account. As a result, they are also so troubling to me. There are so many issues a president must weigh in on–known and unknown.
So, I find myself, as an issues-based voter who does not have a single ideology that defines my voting (but who wants to see rigorous decision making at the highest levels of our government) feeling like a bit of a loner. Having said that, I also sense that there are others out there like me–people who will vote based on a person’s intelligence and judgment and ability to reason. But the hopes of galvanizing them into a large enough bloc (and, indeed, getting qualified candidates to run for office) seem slim, even for an optimist like me.
In some of your posts, I have sensed a similar frustration–although perhaps with more tolerance. I just wondered whether anything I say here resonates with you. And since you have more time to think and write about things like this than I do (as a full-time working person), I figured I would share this in case any of it is of interest to you. If not, I am sorry to have populated your in box with my expressions of frustration. Regardless, I am grateful for your voice in the blogosphere.
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I agree in principle, but assume based on her criteria that she did not vote in at least the past two presidential elections, as no candidate met her qualifications.
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Maybe we should refer to Trump and the Democrats as “dumb and Dumber.”
I think we’re in a different time, and while I don’t advocate it, I think the Democrats will kill the filibuster in their next opportunity. Statesmanship is dead.
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