GOP Breaking Filibuster Record
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on September 21st, 2007 9:52 am by HL
Republican Senators Setting New Records for Filibustering
Washington Monthly
Excerpt
GOP FILIBUSTERS….I see that Republicans have successfully filibustered two more bills today: one to give a House seat to the District of Columbia (57-42) and one to restore habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects (56-43).
That seems like a good excuse to rerun this chart that McClatchy put together a couple of months ago. As you can see, Republicans aren’t just obstructing legislation at normal rates. They’re obstructing legislation at three times the usual rate. They’re absolutely desperate to keep this stuff off the president’s desk, where the only choice is to either sign it or else take the blame for a high-profile veto.
As things stand, though, Republicans will largely avoid blame for their tactics. After all, the first story linked above says only that the DC bill “came up short in the Senate” and the second one that the habeas bill “fell short in the Senate.” You have to read with a gimlet eye to figure out how the vote actually broke down, and casual readers will come away thinking that the bills failed because of some kind of generic Washington gridlock, not GOP obstructionism.
HL’s Take
Of course they wined like babies needing a diaper change when the Democrats tried to use it to block Harriet Miers, and a couple of other times. That is until the spineless democrats agreed not to use the filibuster anymore. Remember that, I think we did a comic about it back on May 24, 2005
