Is Harry Reid just a misunderstood genius?
by Rossputin | 7:41 am, March 11, 2010 | Comments Off
The Harry Reid follies continue…or are they really the actions of an unrecognized true genius. The latter could be true if you accept the maxim, often ascribed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.”
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he supports efforts by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) to try to change filibuster rules in the Senate’s next session.
Just one month ago, Reid was singing a different tune. According to the Washington Post’s February 11th article, “Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, saying the chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.”
The Post also noted that “in 2005…Reid fiercely defended the minority’s right to filibuster and argued that the Senate was bound by its past rules until the supermajority acted to change them.”
Reid is getting desperate, for himself and for The One. Senate rules and history be damned.
While it’s unlikely that these moves will succeed since at least a few Democrat senators recognize that they will not always – indeed, maybe not even next year – be in the majority, one has to wonder at just how far out of touch the Democrat leadership is with the American electorate.
“Progressives”, which is to say the far left of the Democrat Party, care nothing for principle. They are strictly utilitarian, willing to say and do one thing today and the opposite tomorrow if they believe it gets them a step closer to their desired socialist utopia.
In case you don’t believe me, here’s a great example from the wacky-left Daily Kos: “Obviously, unrestrained majority rule is not a good idea, but when you’re dealing with policies like the current health care proposal – as opposed to issues involving constitutional rights, such as the power to declare war or the freedom of speech – majority rule is the American way.”
Huh? What part of taking over 1/6th of the American economy, spending our children in to bankruptcy, and wrecking the health care system that’s the envy of the world does not impinge on multiple Constitutional rights, not least the fact that it’s patently unconstitutional to require someone to buy something (insurance) as a condition of citizenship? That and other constitutional questions surround ObamaCare, including a few discussed HERE.
And what part of American history says that rules for making laws should be different based on whether a particular person or group claims that an issue is fundamentally about the constitution or just about insignificant things like your health? The blogger is, like all Progressives, utterly utilitarian, making any feeble excuse to change the rules to get his way. You can only imagine the bloody murder he’d be screaming if Republicans were talking about eliminating the filibuster as a tactic to pass an abortion ban or a repeal of gun rights restrictions.
The true Progressives, though, are a minority of the Democrat Party (even if a majority of their leadership) and a very small minority of Americans.
Real Americans, on the other hand, tend to be at least slightly more principle-oriented and react much more negatively to transparent attempts by anyone from politians to businesses to casinos to change the rules of the game when it becomes clear that those politicians or businesses or casinos are not winning the game. If you can’t win the game, change it until you can. No Sale, Harry.
If Democrats are able to effectively gut the filibuster next year (they can’t do it this year because that rule change which takes only a majority at the beginning of a Senate session would take 67 votes during a session), it would all but guarantee that Democrats lose their majority in the Senate in 2012 if they don’t lose it in 2010. But the leadership doesn’t care if it means they can pass the most sweeping leftist legislation in two generations and help care for the legacy of their beloved Dear Leader, Barack “Pass Anything, Please!” Obama.
Reid’s move is politically questionable as well. Threatening to change the rules to get their way will be yet another argument made against Democrat Senate candidates in the upcoming election. Furthermore, with Democrats in the electorate likely to care about “fairness”, seeing their own party try to rig the game could demotivate Democrat voters and allow on-the-bubble Senators like Barbara Boxer to be beaten. One can only hope.
It’s also funny to hear Reid throw more of his own blood in the water: Schumer and Durbin are both interested in eliminating the filibuster because they see a decent chance of Democrats having a one- or two-vote majority in the next Senate…and an even better chance of Harry Reid having been returned to civilian life.
Schumer and Reid are sharks tearing at the twitching but not yet lifeless body of Harry Reid and all Reid is doing is bleeding a little more. Hardly a good way to stop a shark.
In fairness, if Reid is a genius then so is President Obama. Obama and his henchman, David Axelrod, have called for an “up or down vote”, code for bypassing a filibuster. But in 2005, when Republicans stupidly tried a similar move, Obama said “majoritarian absolute power (is) not what the Framers intended.”
Obama was right in 2005 and Reid was right just a month ago. Given their current efforts to destroy the filibuster, perhaps nobody but their far-left fringe socialist base or F. Scott Fitzgerald would be proud.
