Blog Running Beyond The Election – ‘Prospects brighten for filibuster reform’
Almost (I repeat Almost) as important as WHO we elect is how we govern in the future.
The damage from the 4 years of Republican filibuster have brought our Country to it’s knees.
This has to stop.
‘During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America’.
‘One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”
‘Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”
@ : http://www.washingtonpost.com/how-grover-norquist-hypnotized-the-gop/2011/06/30/AGYOUlsH_story.html
By Greg Sargent at WaPo
‘Here’s another reason to be cautiously optimistic about the way the political winds are blowing: With Dems seemingly on track to hang on to the Senate — and with Obama’s electoral edge perhaps holding — the prospects are brightening for an overhaul of the filibuster’.
‘Senator Jeff Merkley, the co-author of a package of filibuster reforms, has secured commitments from nine leading Dem Senate candidates to throw themselves behind fixing the filibuster if they are elected’.
‘If Dems do hold the Senate, we could be looking at a more progressive Democratic caucus next year, thanks to this year’s crop of unexpectedly solid progressive candidates. This could result in more pressure on the Dem leadership to actually go through with reform’.
‘Merkley is calling for reforms that, among other things, would force the filibustering party to play a much more public role in obstructing the majority — perhaps making it politically less appetizing. The Senate has already adopted one proposed reform, the elimination of the secret hold’.
‘This spring, Harry Reid caused a stir when he said he’d finally seen the light on the need for real reform’.
‘Republicans are skeptical that Reid is serious about changing the filibuster, and there’s some grounds for that skepticism. However, it’s also possible that the unprecedented GOP obstructionism of the last four years may have persuaded Reid, as David Dayen put it recently, that the Senate has become a “super majority institution” that is “governed by a tyranny of the minority” and is “horrendously broken.”
‘But if Dems hold both the White House and the Upper Chamber, reform may become a real possibility’.
‘It would be an ironic outcome if the very plot hatched by GOP leaders to deny Obama a second term — abusing the rules and rendering the institution dysfunctional to turn his presidency into a failure — is what finally created the political will among Dems to take steps towards ending such dysfunction and abuse for good’.
From : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/prospects-brighten-for-filibuster-reform/2012/10/31/a1ceead0-238b-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html
The Last Of The Millenniums 