March 19, 2009

Dog bites man (again)

I don't feel obligated to link to the cesspool of insanity it has become, but John Cole is full of the righteousness of his position on the Democrats essentially ending the filibuster for legislation. My comment, awaiting moderation, may or may not slip through. I'll post it below, after I reach into the wayback machine to show things were different back in the day.


Update: Obviously, John Cole and I disagree over the whole filibuster thing. Excerpt:


As for the filibuster bullshit, we slit our own damned throats with that. I would like an up or down vote on nominees, but I just don't have it in me to lie about the situation.

We changed the rules of the game, and then acted all shocked when the Democrats (who are in no way without sin) got pissed. We stopped the blue slips and other options once we became the majority. The Constitutional issue is nothing more than nonsense to sell the naked power grab, and that is what it was. Bush never expected for all of his judges to get confirmed- no reasonable President would.

See, here's where I think that John might not be seeing the big picture. Does he really think that the next time the Democrats hold the power in the Senate that they won't change the Senate rules to suit their purposes? After all, Robert Byrd did it in the not so distant past, reducing the number of votes for cloture from 67 down to 60.

Let's go all out in this example. Hillary becomes president in 2008 and the Dem's sweep to power in the Senate riding on her coattails. Now imagine that she nominates some left-wing ideologue who believes that it's okey-dokey to legislate from the bench. Now the Republicans decide to filisbuster this unreasonable candidate. Does John actually believe that the Democrats will spend more than a few minutes trying to find some sort of compromise to get an up-or-down vote in the Senate? I don't think so. After some public appearances decrying the Republicans' stonewalling, the Senate Democrats will change the filibuster rule so that cloture can be invoked with only 51 votes for judges. Once the judicial filibuster is broken, those same 51 Democrats will then vote en masse for whomever Hillary nominated. Count on it.

Now I will grant you that a couple of things are off: Hillary didn't win. However, another committed leftist did, along with a legion of congressional Democrats. Also, the Dems are talking about ending -more or less- the filibuster for legislative items, not judicial nominations. I guess that even I wasn't cynical enough to expect that. Silly me.

Anyway. It's now a few years later and John thinks that the Dems idea is just fine and dandy. Here's the response that I left in the comments:


Hmm. I remember a certain Mr. Cole pissing and moaning when the GOP mentioned possibly changing the Senate rules to allow cloture votes on judicial nominations by simple majority vote, rather than a 2/3 majority. When I mentioned that the Democrats were certain to do the same when they retook Congress, John made some comment about shoving a red hot poker or such up his ass worrying about what "might" happen. Funny thing is, now that it actually is possible that the Democrats would change the cloture rules (again) to their benefit to pass legislation, rather than bring simply to bring judicial nominee votes to the floor, the same Mr. Cole is saying "Serves you right, fuckers!"

I'm not surprised at the blatant hypocrisy. In fact, I expected it. I'd been waiting to see how John would weigh in on this issue and-surprise- he acted like a hack. Then again, the sun did rise in the east this morning, so it's good to know some things never change.

Being hyperpartisan is one thing. Being stupidly, predictable, hypocritically hyperpartisan hacks is quite another. Unfortunately, the hacks don't get it, probably because they're stupid and hypocritical. But hey, everyone's got their faults.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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