In one sense, a prolonged debate about an appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security and the rules of the Senate doesn’t seem very interesting. But the silver lining here is the way that it really shines a light on the Republicans’ Reality Detachment Syndrome.
What will it take to get Republicans who don’t work in the Senate to understand that the Senate needs 60 votes to pass legislation? It’s not like the last four years haven’t been almost entirely gridlocked do to Mitch McConnell’s exploitation of this requirement.
What was it that Upton Sinclair said about it being hard to convince a man of something if his job requires him not to understand it? Yeah, pretty much.
Earlier this month, Freshman Republican Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia made a valiant effort to that end. “They explained to us how the Senate process works, and we were glad to have some of our former colleagues do that,” Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama told the Washington Post. “From this House member’s perspective, and I think that I reflect the vast majority of the members of our conference,” Byrne added, “the Senate needs to do its job. Period.”
The lesson didn’t go well. To do its job (with or without a period) the Senate majority will need 60 votes, and the House legislation stands little prospect of attracting more than 54. “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to accept reality,” Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania told the New York Times. Dent is one of the Republican Conference’s last moderates. In the House these days, that means you understand that 54 is not the same as 60.
Paraphrasing Tina Turner, “What’s reality got to do with it?”
Not to brag, but here in the Mid-Atlantic, our Republicans are more Wall Street and less Wal-Mart parking lot, so they actually have maintained a weak grasp on the string back to sanity.
“If I have to vote against Republicans, I will,” said Long Island U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). “If I have to vote against the Republican leadership, I will. I’m not going to see another 9/11.”
…King told [CBS2’s Marcia] Kramer that Republicans from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania plan to meet house leadership Tuesday night to demand a vote on the bill.
He said he has enough Republicans willing to join with the Democrats to pass the bill. The big worry is that the leaders will keep the bill bottled up so it doesn’t reach the floor.
It’s probably never a good idea to schedule an appointment with John Boehner at night. He gets too deep in his cups to remember nocturnal conversations in the morning. Besides, the Republican Caucus-That-Can-Count isn’t big enough to matter.
Ah the ever not knowing TP/GOP of Congress. It is amazing how many people voted in office politicians that seem to not have the ability to understand how Congress works. More importantly these same politicians now Congressional members are proud of their inability to do their jobs in Congress and have no desire to learn how to do the job.
Only in America do people vote to pay for incompetence.
I’m amazed that Senate Democrats are united. Especially on this issue. They certainly ran away from the Employee Free Choice Act as quickly as they could. There seem to be always some LieberDem willing to spit in the eye of the President and Harry Reid. I can only conclude that they all consider this a matter of personal political survival. Nothing else would give them solidarity.
Oh, I think the Radical Repubs understand senate rules pretty well, they surely aren’t that complicated. Rather, I think it’s the rest of the country’s institutions and populace that have to understand the new Repub Reality.
And that reality is that our gub’mint is now shackled to radical lunatics who haven’t the slightest qualms about defunding DHS. They said that they were going to battle Obammy’s lawless regime on everything from immigration to foreign policy and if they have to defund the entire gub’mint, they will. They know they cannot lose the House or be politically harmed by whatever actions they take in the name of confronting The Tyrant.
They aren’t going to blink, they are going to let finding for DHS lapse. The country has no way out of this bind. And there will be many more such actions to follow. Radical Repubs now control the purse, the strongest lever in government, and they control the federal courts, who will consistently rule against a Dem prez.
That is the New Reality, that is what the voters of 2014 have decreed. No escape.
Driftglass nailed it back in 2013: “Some men just want to watch the world burn”.
Typo in the first sentence of the second graph. This was very enlightening to me. Glad there are some people willing to stand up to leadership in the GOP. That seems rare to me.
So will this finally break through the Hastert rule? It is rare, and maybe this will be a one-off, but that seems to be what Rep. King is suggesting.