There’s No Place Like the Senate
If Jim DeMint can singlehandedly shut down the Senate by just clicking his heels together three times, I can only imagine what he would be like as minority leader. I hope I see that day soon. This guy is a one-man wrecking machine.
September 29, 2010 7:31 am
Posted in: 59-41 Senate Minority, Republican Stupidity
46 Comments
46 Responses
wvng - September 29, 2010 | 7:38 am · Link
How about as majority leader? That would be even more special.
homerhk - September 29, 2010 | 7:40 am · Link
He would be powerless if Obama just fought a bit harder, no?
arguingwithsignposts - September 29, 2010 | 7:42 am · Link
FSM, i hate the senate.
John S. - September 29, 2010 | 7:48 am · Link
Meanwhile, Lady Jane is the official spokesperson for progressives everywhere:
It’s amazing how insignificant, powerless bloggers can be used to create a media narrative.
Sly - September 29, 2010 | 7:52 am · Link
L’etat, c’est moi.
aimai - September 29, 2010 | 8:00 am · Link
Just when I’ve reached a precarious mental equilibrium, by contemplating my own imminent demise in a buddhist kind of way, the Republicans shock me back into both caring, and despairing. How is this possible? Is it some kind of dark genius? What the frackity fracking frack? Jim DeMint de facto head of government? If the dems don’t come back with 51 votes to break the fucking Senate into smithereens then this country has simply become ungovernable by a Democrat and we can resign ourselves to spiraling into the abyss without further ado.
aimai
Chyron HR - September 29, 2010 | 8:05 am · Link
@John S.:
debbie - September 29, 2010 | 8:06 am · Link
DeMint was able to orchestrate a year-long, very bruising battle over health care reform with his simple statement that the issue would be Obama’s Waterloo, so I think he’s good for his word. Which is why he and his must be stopped in November.
zattarra - September 29, 2010 | 8:18 am · Link
@John S.: I took my first shot at Laurence O’Donnell’s new show last night. His opening was on the Obama administration punching hippies. I made it all the way through his framing narrative and then he led off with a statement from fierdoglake representing “the left” and “Obama supporters” and leading in to his discussion with the head of the Progressive Change Campaign and the reporter who interviewed the President for Rolling Stone. At that point I turned the TV set off.
If a non Fox show is going to claim Jane Hamsher’s little coffee klatch of crazy speaks for the 60 million people who voted for President Obama I’m going to have to turn it off.
Napoleon - September 29, 2010 | 8:24 am · Link
The one silver lining with the Demint situation is that it is rubbing a dog’s (i.e., the Dem Sen caucus) nose it it to prove a point. I am convinced that the filibuster and holds have to go and after stunts like this it is absolutely impossible for so much as a single member to be able to think that they will ever get anything done if they happen to hold on a a majority unless there are significant rules changes.
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 8:24 am · Link
@zattarra:
You should’ve kept it on because it turned into a good battle between the President of the Progressive Change Committee who wanted to see “Obama fight for the public option” and the President of Rolling Stone who said “sure, that would please us, the rest of the country, however…”
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 8:25 am · Link
@Napoleon:
you think Republicans want to get anything done? Even when they’re in the majority?
dmsilev - September 29, 2010 | 8:29 am · Link
@Napoleon:
I have this unfortunate feeling that even after having their nose rubbed in DeMint’s mess, there will still be a substantial number of Senate Democrats who will mouth phrases like “Senate traditions” and words like “comity” as excuses for dithering and doing nothing to try to reform the rules that make this sort of nonsense possible.
dms
4tehlulz - September 29, 2010 | 8:30 am · Link
@zattarra: So basically, mission accomplished for Jane.
zattarra - September 29, 2010 | 8:33 am · Link
@Nick: Damn, maybe I should not have been so reactionary.
WereBear (itouch) - September 29, 2010 | 8:34 am · Link
Tradition is fne in it’s place. But when it means “centuries of history and not an inch of progress” it has to go.
Napoleon - September 29, 2010 | 8:41 am · Link
@dmsilev:
I think you are likely right, but then you know they are either lying about their motives or stunningly stupid people (but likely both).
Dave Fud - September 29, 2010 | 8:42 am · Link
And here we thought Dr. No was such an ass.
South Carolina has a special kind of crazy. I guess it’s sort of a state-level Napoleon syndrome, especially given the Waterloo talk.
Dennis SGMM - September 29, 2010 | 8:44 am · Link
It strikes me that the duties of the Senate could be considerably streamlined with no ill effect if Senators were simply called upon to appear once each day while Congress was in session to say the word “Harrumph!” and then go on about the business of collecting money for their campaign war chests.
Kryptik - September 29, 2010 | 8:50 am · Link
What a broken fucking institution.
Linda Featheringill - September 29, 2010 | 8:59 am · Link
@Kryptik:
Yep. Democratic republics are absolute bitches. Amazing that we get anything done.
Linda Featheringill - September 29, 2010 | 9:06 am · Link
Have you read this by Steve Pearlstein?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....06308.html
That is quite a statement, that DeMint would be bad for business, even if it is true.
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 9:07 am · Link
President Demint is like putting Daffy Duck in charge of reality.
If this keeps up, gonna brain myself with the rubber mallet.
Jinchi - September 29, 2010 | 9:07 am · Link
I don’t think Democrats realize that the most annoying thing about the fact that one Senator can shut down the legislature today is that apparently they could have stopped the the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, the bankruptcy bill, the appointments of Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Gonzales, etc. if a single Democrat had bothered to gum up the works.
Then again, maybe DeMint can derail the legislative agenda because the rest of the Senate is just fine with him doing that.
Kryptik - September 29, 2010 | 9:09 am · Link
@Jinchi:
Or the fact that if a Democrat dared show such gall and iron balls, impeachment hearings wouldn’t come soon enough.
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 9:14 am · Link
@Jinchi:
I don’t think you realize that the voters of South Carolina would likely cheer burning crosses on the WH lawn. No dem can count on his/her states voters letting them get away with what Demint can get away with and stay in office.
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 9:21 am · Link
@Jinchi:
Well not really. DeMint’s holds are only working because his party is backing him up. Republicans would easily be able to find five to ten Democrats to stop a hold on that stuff. Feingold actually did try to hold up the Patriot Act, nobody backed him up.
Dennis SGMM - September 29, 2010 | 9:23 am · Link
@Jinchi:
It’s his turn. A secret part of the organizing process for each new Congress is when the Senate elects a designated roadblock. That way Senators from both parties can simply say “What can I do? Senator Fogbound is blocking the legislation.”
pattonbt - September 29, 2010 | 9:37 am · Link
Well, this is smart by DeMint. How’d that stunt work out for Gingrich?
Of course, I don’t think the media playing field is the same now as it was then so DeMint will probably be hailed as principled hero standing up to the fascist, stalinist, marxist, neo-hitler regime!
On a serious side – this is just depressing on way too many levels. I still find it amazing that, even given the problems with the Democratic party in power, than anyone who is a thinking, feeling, caring, rational human being can vote for a Republican (except those of course financially served by the Republican party, that 1% minority). It baffles the mind.
Tom Hilton - September 29, 2010 | 9:38 am · Link
I don’t want to be unreasonably optimistic, but I’m not sure it would be a bad thing election-wise for DeMint to do that. We can shout til we’re all hoarse about how they plan to shut down the government if they get a majority and nobody’s going to listen, but a current visible example of how they ‘govern’ might make a difference.
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 9:40 am · Link
@pattonbt:
And any democrat not voting is the same as voting for a republican.
Kryptik - September 29, 2010 | 9:59 am · Link
Seriously, why did we bother with an election in ‘08 when it’s still so fucking clear that the GOP is still our de facto leaders?
Jinchi - September 29, 2010 | 10:30 am · Link
Exactly. But that’s why many people think it’s pointless to go to the polls for Democrats this year. We gave them a huge majority in the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and the presidency and they can hardly get Obama’s mid-level nominees out of committee.
Republicans are constantly looking for procedural loopholes to advance their agenda. Democrats are constantly searching for excuses to avoid getting anything done.
When Democrats were in the minority the told us that they couldn’t stop the Republican agenda because Republicans controlled Congress. So they voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq war and the bankruptcy bill. When they won Congress in 2006, they told us they couldn’t stop Bush’s agenda because Bush would veto their bills, so they rubber stamped his war funding requests and his NSA spying demands. When they won 58 Senate seats in 2008 they told us that everything needed 60 to come to the floor, and included Republican language in every bill. When they got their 60th vote with Franken, Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh threatened to join Republican filibusters, so Democrats dropped even a token public option. And when Brown took Kennedy’s seat they told us they couldn’t accomplish anything with a mere 18 vote margin and nearly dropped health care altogether (even though the Senate had already voted on it).
At some point you have to conclude that these guys simply don’t want what they say they want. DeMint, McConnell and the Republican caucus have been successful because too many elected Democrats want them to be successful.
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 10:45 am · Link
@Jinchi: It really isn’t fair to compare democrats response in the aftermath of 9-11 that turned upside down our politics for quite a while with a public in something like shock and supporting Bush with very high approval numbers. But there are some things that got through the GOP senate that should have been blocked, where enough dems actually did support the GOP agenda, such as the bankruptcy bill. But others like privatizing SS went nowhere, nor drilling in ANWR.
But I don’t buy the overtone of your analysis to any great degree, that dems, or really very many of them, support most of, or more than a few gooper initiatives. Nor the implication that dems are as bad as wingnuts. When mostly what you are talking about is a handful in the senate in the presence of the filibuster. And dems just aren’t rigid loyalists like wingers, by nature. All of them ended up voting for a sweeping HCR bill, minus a PO, that still was and is hated by the insurance industry and the GOP, who preferred the profitable status quo. so statements like
Need some nuance to include maintaining a 60 vote caucus, and that dems have passed quite a lot of stuff the GOP hated, albeit with compromise for their blue dogs in the senate, but still hated by the right, who have offered unified consistent opposition on about every vote.
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 11:09 am · Link
And it is amusing irony that some on the left while bemoaning the lack of dem congress critter loyalty to party votes, when they never miss an opportunity to bash dems and Obama, and sometimes threaten to withhold their votes.
Maude - September 29, 2010 | 11:20 am · Link
@General Stuck:
You know what gets me? The whatever you call them, the ones who call themselves Obama’s base, say that Obama has let them down and disrespects his base. The thing of it is that these same people have been bashing, and I don’t use that term lightly, Obama and the Dems since day one in 2009.
And yet, they turn around, without batting an eyelash and say that Obama has gone against ‘his base’.
With friends like that, Obama and the Dems don’t need enemies.
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 11:28 am · Link
@Jinchi:
Actually we didn’t give them a filibuster-proof majority, Arlen Specter did, for a few months.
But this is why Republican obstructionism works, no matter how Dems call them out, because they can’t stop it and you think it’s not worth giving them your vote because they can’t. It’s like blaming the pilot for a weather delay.
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 11:29 am · Link
@Jinchi:
they weren’t even close to ever dropping healthcare altogether after Brown won.
Steaming Pile - September 29, 2010 | 12:43 pm · Link
@Jinchi: Well, if the Senate is too busy going around DeMint’s silly little tantrums, they won’t have time to consider extending the Bush tax cuts. If I were the majority leader, I would have already made that abundantly clear.
Steaming Pile - September 29, 2010 | 12:44 pm · Link
@Nick:
THIS.
Cain - September 29, 2010 | 2:18 pm · Link
No this guy is a one man wrecking crew! But he also knows how to PARTAY!
cain
Cain - September 29, 2010 | 2:23 pm · Link
@Nick:
Actually, I’m pretty sure they just want to grab more money from its right wing populace. For Republicans it is all about sucking money from either hte populace or from donors and then finally a cushy job as a lobbyist (this is true for democrats as well, but republicans are better at it).. they don’t really want to change anything they just want to stroke the outrage and get money.
cain
mds - September 29, 2010 | 2:25 pm · Link
@aimai:
???(!) I confess I haven’t been keeping up with current events in Balloon Juice comment threads, but I really hope this is merely a rhetorical memento mori sort of statement.
Jinchi - September 29, 2010 | 2:32 pm · Link
I disagree. Nobody was talking about the need to maintain a 60 vote caucus until Obama won the presidential election. Then Harry Reid started telling us that everything needs 60 votes. Nobody said it when Bill Frist had 51 votes in his caucus or when Trent Lott had 55 in his.
First, I have every intention of voting for Democrats in November, but plenty of other people won’t, because they don’t see the point.
As to the idea that they can’t do anything to stop Republican obstruction, that’s another lie that the Democratic party has convinced itself of.
As a good example, they could try this:
But they aren’t doing that are they? The smart thing for the Democratic caucus to do would be to play hardball themselves (You can have a partial extension of the tax cuts or we can simply sit on our hands and let them all expire). You’d do it. I’d do it. How many of you think that the Democrats in Congress are going to do it? Have you heard any Democrat even hinting that they might try it?
General Stuck - September 29, 2010 | 5:33 pm · Link
@Jinchi:
Nonsense, Doesn’t matter what Harry Reid said, he just voiced the tactics of the GOP senators, who are the ones filibustering everything that moves. Not a matter of you “disagreeing”. It’s a matter of you being flat wrong
Nick - September 29, 2010 | 6:40 pm · Link
@Jinchi
The media was. The whole campaign in 2008, the question was “will the Democrats reach 60, because they’ll need to if they want to pass anything”