Last week Governor Gladiator (Granholm) announced the creation of nearly 7,500 jobs in the State of Michigan and billions of dollars that are going to be invested in these new jobs.
Also, last week President Bush bypassed the Southern Resistance (Senators Corker, McConnell, and Shelby) and created his own auto industry bailout. Funny thing was, the bailout turned out to be almost exactly like what the Senate would have passed two weeks ago. This will aid the industry in these next couple of months and hopefully usher a new era of strength in the American auto industry. You have to give it up to the UAW, the Big Three, Democrats, and President Bush (gasp) for working together and seeing the need to stand with the American worker.
One more thing on the Southern Resistance –
if this is any indication of how the Republican minority plans to act during the Obama Presidency then the Democrats need to toughen up. If these three clowns plan on shutting down vital pieces of legislation, like the auto bailout, for minuscule and divisive reaso we need to feel free to call their bluff. What do I mean?
I mean forcing them to filibuster. An actual read-from-the-phonebook filibuster. Not just a failure for cloture “filibuster.” If they are so ideologically driven to destroy American jobs let them go the mattresses for their beliefs. Why is it that we Democrats were scared straight about even considering a filibuster as the minority party, but we now go out of our way to avoid a Republican one.
Let them filibuster health care reform. Let them filibuster economic stimulus packages. Let them filibuster climate change legislation. Let them face the consequences of being a regional, narrow minded Republican minority.
Senator Stabenow gets real with super big visual helpers.
Senator Gravel filibusters draft renewal legislation by reading the Pentagon Papers outloud and in public.
Finally, the Stackhouse Filibuster…
Oh my! Those are the biggest visual aides I have ever seen. I’m having high school forensics flashbacks.
If Lindsay read the blog more often (ever), I’d make a 1/100 joke.
I think having Harry Reid require true filibusters may very well be a double edged sword. The reason that the Senate moved to the current structure is still sound; traditional filibusters shut down the floor completely.
If the Democratic Majority (Harry Reid specifically, because I believe its within his authority to require true filibusters) uses this option we’re going to be at blame just as much as the Republicans for grinding the Senate to a halt. Even if only three to five Senators are filibustering, given an estimate of 8 hours a piece twice during a session (as per Senate rules as I understand them a speaker can only filibuster twice during a legislative session), that’s 48-80 hours worth of floor time gone. I can’t see this not leading to serious and justified attacks.
While I think the idea of moving back to traditional filibusters has some appeal I also think it has serious drawbacks. If the party moves this direction it must be prepared for serious resistance among the public and Congress.
The key here is to make sure we frame the issue as the Republican filibuster. That it was the Republican Party that forced the Senate into a standstill.
These fools already get away with forcing bills to die through cloture, but that hardly garners any media attention for them… none at all. It is a sneaky way of ruining good legislation without garnering any public wrath.