GOP discovers filibusters are wrong as a matter of principle
A bill to repeal the health care law drew the full force of both parties Tuesday as debate on the measure opened in the House, launching a two-year battle over President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
Ahead of the vote Wednesday, House Republican leaders pressed a new line of attack, accusing Democrats of thwarting the will of the people by not committing to give the bill an up-or-down vote in the Senate.
I defer to H. L. Mencken and (the apocryphal) P.T. Barnum.
…UPDATE [SL]: Some useful data to put this highly principled Republican claim in context.
P T Barnum wasn’t apocryphal–he was a real person (and a US Congressperson, too–D Bridgeport)
so he thwarted an up or down vote on the egress? or the fiji mermaid?
Barnum ran for Congress but lost; he served a term as mayor of Bridgeport, however, and I believe two terms in the Connecticut legislature. (And by the time he was involved in politics, he was a vocal abolitionist — good on him.)
the quote being assigned to him is the “apocryphal” thing
So that should have read:
[/grammar Nazi]
It’s metonymy. Even grammar nazis can live with metonymy, can’t they?
Even grammar nazis can live with metonymy, can’t they?
Dunno. Isn’t Metonymy near the Sudetenland?
Have to Czech on that…
Not when it uses an extra letter, and a space, to convey a false impression! Characters are precious, they must be husbanded!
Wow, they usually wait at least a *little* longer between aggressively filibustering everything and screaming for “up or down votes”. I don’t even think they made it a solid MONTH this time, between refusing to allow a vote on DADT repeal and today…
The new twist for the next two years will be GOP House members demanding up-or-down votes while, at the very same time, GOP Senators are filibustering other measures.
Political gymnastics experts had long believed this move to be impossible, but I think they’ve underestimated today’s Republican Party.
The hallmark of modern conservatism is the ability to simultaneously hold two or more mutually contradictory (but potentially personally beneficial) positions.
…and not to notice the contradiction.
I think it is more a question of deliberately ignoring it.
As one who has railed against the filibuster, I hope that an up or down vote would still defeat repeal. If not, there’s the veto.
Of course, “the will of the people” is defined as what they want, so filibustering health care was OK.
Well, that’s the thing–anything other than repealing the ACA outright counts as “thwarting the will of the people.” Any process that doesn’t lead to the result they want is an undemocratic process.
In a world where Washington Democrats were intelligent, we’d be reading about a letter sent to every Republican who complained about the lack of an up-or-down vote, calling on them to support Senate rules reform.
[...] Via LGM, it seems Republicans are whining about procedural roadblocks that are getting in the way of them failing to repeal health care reform, and doing so with a level of hypocrisy that is dazzling to see: But a bill to repeal the health care law drew the full force of both parties Tuesday as debate on the measure opened in the House, launching a two-year battle over President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. [...]
WrongfulDeath:
Health care reform has been on the agenda since the Truman administration, and was discussed as far back as Teddy Roosevelt. The Republicans got a lot of their demands met and still sandbagged the bill, and the GOP noise machine has lied so much about what was in the bill that you can’t legitimately say people are against it because a lot of people who “oppose” it don’t know what’s in it.
Need any more reality?
It ain’t over ’till it’s over.
And the house repeal show that clearly, it’s far from over.
Bring.
It.
On.
I love the way that you people are interpreting a narrow House majority, won during the first mid-terms of a new presidency, with unemployment a hair below 10% on election day, as a mandate for your policy platform.
Moar like this, plz.
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Yes, so sad that the Republicans never got to express their opinions on health care reform. Yet somehow we all know what those opinions are. Funny, that.
nice imitation right-winger, there, wrongfuldeath: your tone wasn’t quite hysterical enough, which is how we know it’s a satire (right, it is a satire, innit? you aren’t that stupid?).
it’s all a matter of understanding what principal matters: in this case, the principal is that the gop should get its way. if that means filibuster, it’s for the filibuster; if that means demand an up-or-down vote, it’s that.
Let’s remember ObamaCare that went through reconciliation.
Why did it go through reconciliation, again? Was there some trouble in scheduling it for a straightforward up or down vote in the Senate?
Uh, “ObamaCare” passed with 60 votes on December 24, 2009, after an entire year and a half of debate in various committees and on the floor of the Senate.
So, no. Not even close.
“Whine all you want. As you say, “Elections have consequences”.”
That’s odd – I don’t recall the Republicans saying that in 2006 or 2008.
ACA in fact did not go through reconciliation; it was passed in regular order, first by the Senate, and then by the House. The House then used the reconciliation procedure to amend ACA and those amendments, which could not be filibustered, were agreed to by the Senate.
Facts don’t matter when you are a conservative, you get to create your own reality.
No one wanted this unpopular law
Well, except for the uninsured, but they hardly count. Nobody WrongfulDeath knows wanted the law, so that counts as no one.
And while ObamaCare did not go through reconciliation, you know what did? All of the Bush tax cuts.
Facts are a bitch, aren’t they?
Smokey back rooms? Aren’t libs a bunch of health conscious vegans these days?
This is some feat. A law that no one wanted. Sorta like the Island of Unwanted Toys.
Don’t you know? Bill Frist thinks chunks of the law are “cuddly.” Soon enough, it will be like Medicare, and Tea Party types will say “don’t you dare take aware by twenty-something kid’s health care!”
you’re using undo misspellings.
my god: you are serious, aren’t you? you really are that stupid, wrongfuldeath?
i too enjoy the notion of the dreaded liberals gathering in a smoke-filled room: i don’t think such a thing has happened in 40+ years, but wrongfuldeath may well have insider sources.
It’s like Limbaugh visited from that alternative he created….you know, where this bill didn’t take a year to pass as every Republican Max Baucus ever knew was able to string him along. This guy is great!
A few typos there but Tea Party types aren’t always totally coherent either.
irony above
Perhaps he is referring to marijuana smoke? That might be why the smoke filled room itself is actually unethical to him.
Yeah, it shows that idiot, sore-loser wingnuts like you refuse to accept defeat. “Interesting” in the sense that it shows how psychotic you all are, certainly.