So reconciliation is on, and this has the usual suspects all in a huff:
Putting aside the fact that they are not passing HCR through reconciliation, these guys don’t even understand how threats work. Usually, to have some effect, you have to issue the threat PRIOR to engaging in the behavior. What could the Republicans possibly do that they haven’t already?
We’ve already seen record numbers of filibusters and clotures. They’ve already used every parliamentary trick in the books to bog down the legislation. They’ve negotiated in bad faith, stalled, and then voted en masse against. They’ve lied and misrepresented everything the Democrats have tried to do. They even insisted that we wheel the near dead Byrd onto the Senate floor late night, and openly prayed for the death of another Senator. And now we are supposed to fear obstructionism?
Bring it on. Up until now, the Democrats have suffered because people don’t really understand the concept of 60 votes, and have just wondered why Democrats don’t just pass their bills. They’ve looked at Democrats as the parents of an unruly child who just don’t have the nerve to get their kid in line.
But now, after the Bunning stunt, in which he wasted millions and deprived millions of needed aid, slowed down road construction, and made a bureaucratic nightmare of unemployment benefits, the American people got a glimpse of what is going on. One man had a hissy fit and thwarted the will of both parties.
So I say to Erick and the teabagging Republican Senators- bring it on. The neighborhood is starting to realize this is not just bad parenting, and now that the problem child isn’t just a problem for the parents, but is running around slashing everyone’s tires and generally making a mess of every damned thing, they are starting to pay attention. Even the media is running out of excuses and are starting to realize this isn’t 1994, but 1996.
So, go for it. I double dog dare you.
Punchy
TL;DR. But I will comment thusly — the Dems aren’t passing HCR thru reconcilliation! The bill’s already passed the Senate.
They’re merely passing some modifiers w/ reconcilliation. Big diff. The fact that the Repubs are purposely mixing the two appears to be a feature, not a bug.
dmsilev
Not to mention, Erick ibn Erick is the wrong person to be issuing threats of “bad things”. What, is he going to ask his readership to pump up his Amazon affiliate sales by sending random objects to random lawmakers?
-dms
licensed to kill time
“health care deform ?” aw, Ewick … that’s so cute! so clever, too! Did you think that up all by yourself ?
Face
If Erik threatened with just “many objections”, I’d tell him to go hump his cat. But since he used three “many”s, now I guess I’m thrice more scared.
Better do as he says, before he throws a quad-many in there and completely fucks us all.
ChrisS
There will be many, many, many more Bunning style[sic] objections to all sorts of u/c reqs.
No shit? As opposed to the very helpful minority party they have been so far?
So the obstructionist party will just be more obstructionist?
Erik isn’t very intelligent is he?
Comrade Dread
The only thing that mildly worries me is that the next time Republicans gain power, they’ll turn up everything to 11 and really go bats*** crazy.
That being said, I kind of expect them to do that anyway, so what the h*ll?
dmsilev
Has Sarah Palin updated her Facebook profile yet?
-dms
Dracula
What the hell are “u/c reqs.” ?
CJ
. . .posts like these are why I love coming here. Just sayin’.
You should triple dog dare them.
Redshirt
I wish I believed that the Bunning Stunt would change people’s minds, but if they haven’t learned this lesson already, why would they now? Were the Government shutdowns of the 90’s not enough to convince them? The raging hypocrisies of the Bush Admin?
No, I suspect nothing will ever be enough, because this is a feature, not a bug.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Oh NOES!
The Germans are bombing Pearl Clutching Harbor!
Oh the HUMANITY!
ChrisS
@Comrade Dread:
Seriously. Why should the progressive/liberal/slightly saner party give in to any of their petualant crybaby demands?
You damn well that as soon as the GOP is back in power all this talk of fiscal sanity will go right out the window and they’ll start complaining about the mean ol’ dummycrats blocking their attempt to do away with medicare, social security, and the EPA so they can fund four wars at the same time instead of just two.
Ed Drone
And let the Democrats use every parliamentary trick of their own, from rulings by the chair to making the Party of NO actually filibuster 24/7, broadcast on C-Span and clips distributed to every cable, TV, and blog station, to make it obvious what’s been going on.
The Repugs are being 4-year-olds, so let’s use the social mechanism of shaming them for what they do. Turn them into pariahs, and let the country know that, while there’s work for the adults to do, the GOP would rather throw tantrums.
Ed
Chyron HR
Does he know 140 characters is a limit, not a requirement?
licensed to kill time
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: LOL ;-)
Comrade Kevin
@Dracula: I assume he means “unanimous consent”, although with Ewick, it could mean “Undercity” for all I know.
slag
So true. So very true.
NovShmozKaPop
I’m enjoying the news headlines that say things like: “Democrats will walk the plank on health care reform!” “Democrats will pay the price at the polls!” … and when I drill down a bit I discover that these things are generally quotes from congressional Republicans. Brrr! Very frightening!
I love pointless and ineffectual threats by Republicans, very entertaining.
Blue Neponset
It is too bad it took Obama over a year to figure out that the Republicans are going to shit kittens no matter what he does so he might as well do the right thing.
I can’t understand why Pelosi has been the only Dem leader to accept this simple idea.
David Hunt
This is exactly what they’re going to do. Doubling down is only move that they know
dmsilev
@Dracula: Unanimous Consent requests. Basically, a lot of the procedure of the Senate is “I ask for unanimous consent that we proceed to a vote on S.1234” and the like, and if a single Senator objects, it takes a while to get a quorum call, etc., to overrule the objection.
In other words, a single sufficient jackass-y Senator can chew up an enormous amount of Senate time, and it only takes a few jackass-y Senators to completely clog up the works.
-dms
trollhattan
Reconciliation a Go-Go would be, like, the most boring nightclub evah.
Dork
Is Erickson going to call in these objections to the Senate floor via twitter from his mom’s basement? Can he put down the Mountain Dew and buffalo wings long enough to grease-up 140 characters on his Blackberry?
someguy
There’s no reason not to insert the public option at this point. The Republicans are utterly powerless here and their mindless opposition to everything is going to doom them in the fall. Remember 1998? They don’t. They got pounded despite Clinton being under siege and having huge Republican majorities. The one thing Americans won’t tolerate is a do-nothing obstructionist Congress. That tells me that the Dems really need to double down on on HCR, and let the Republicans filibuster the government shut over this. As funny as Newt’s crash was, it will be funnier when the puny Republican opposition is rewarded with even smaller minorities.
Blue Neponset
@dmsilev: The Repubs are pretty close to overplaying their hand. Despite what the Tea Baggers think our nation actually needs a functioning government. If the R’s go full retard in the Senate it will backfire.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Chyron HR: I’ve never understood why the140 characters thing is considered as something new. Tolstoy wrote novels with 140 characters and that was more than a hundred years ago.
Ash Can
An important part of being a right-winger like Ewwick is a remarkable dearth of common fucking sense. Barring a miracle, it will never, ever occur to him that “Bunning-style objections” don’t help the Republicans. For crap’s sake, if anything so far has made the average Joe in the street and in the unemployment line sit up and take notice that the Republicans just might be nothing more than obstructionist douchebags, it was Bunning’s objection.
My deepest gut feeling is that the Congressional Republicans are far more politically savvy than Erick Whatshisname is, and these “many, many Bunning-style objections” will not come to pass. (There’ll be obstruction, all right, but they’ll make damned sure it’s not this blatant anymore.) And in a few months’ time, Erick will either deny he ever made this prediction, or go full-metal teabagger and start frothing and howling in the middle of the night about primarying every Republican who isn’t willing to appear at every press conference wearing a white sheet and swinging a noose around.
Chad S
There’s limits to how much the GOP can tap dance on the Senate floor, especially since the President of the Senate can step in and set the rules at anytime. They can’t put holds on anything, nor can they filibuster anything in the recon process.
Brachiator
This crap has echoes of Newt Gingrich trying to shut down the government during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
It didn’t work then. It’s not working now. The GOP is definitely a one-trick pony.
bago
@Bill E Pilgrim: Didn’t Tolstoy’s characters have names?
Napoleon
I hope the Republicans try to make good on a threat like that and go all Jim Bunning from now until the election. The Senate needs to get rid of filibuster/closure/holds, etc and the only way that happens is if the Dems finally wake up from their coma and blow it all up. The more the Reps act like babies the more likely they wake up.
dmsilev
@Blue Neponset: I agree. If they really shut down the Senate completely, it’ll be like Gingrich and his temper tantrum all over again.
-dms
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Opleaseopleaseopleaseopleaseopleaseoplease!
mcc
One thing that was interesting about Obama’s announcement that the dems are going with reconciliation today is that he refused to use the word “reconciliation”. Anywhere. He referred to it only as “up or down vote”. I think this is to be interpreted as a good thing, and probably something for other Democrats to emulate. Somebody’s figured out the framing thing.
What’s kind of bothering me here, aside from the lack of details about how the reconciliation tactic is going to be performed, is that the White House seems to be acting kind of like a free agent here. We got an announcement from Obama, and a mass email from OFA. But so far we’ve heard nothing from Nancy Pelosi or any member of the House. We’ve heard nothing from Harry Reid or any member of the Senate. We’ve heard nothing from MoveOn or any independent “progressive” group. We don’t have lines of Congresspeople talking about how they’re on board with the plan and want to get this over with as soon as possible. The dems continue to have no internal coordination whatsoever.
brantl
I want to see these assholes try all the bullshit. Please, oh, please give us the video of these whiny little babies, pooring sand into the vital mechanisms of government. My birthday will have come early.
Steve
@Ash Can: This. The difference between us and Erick is that we realize “Bunning-style objections” are not, in fact, political gold. This is why the Senate Republicans were split on how to handle the Bunning issue; some of them saw an opportunity to curry favor with far-right primary voters who think Bunning is awesome, while others run and hid because they correctly concluded that this stuff is politically disastrous in the larger picture.
Comrade Mary
Yes there is: internal opposition from the Blue Dogs.
Some days the Democratic party seems like a perpetual self-kneecapping machine.
A Mom Anon
Can we send Erick some marbles,since he’s fucking lost his?
I saw this asshole on AC 360 bitching about people collecting unemployment and he really has no fucking idea wtf he’s talking about. Why in the FUCK is he on CNN? Why?
My family needs money,I’d be more than happy to go on teevee and talk about unemployment or whatever they want to chat about,as long as they pay me what The Nitwit From Macon gets.
Rick Taylor
I don’t know but I’m sure they’ll think of something. They’ve never failed to disappoint.
Bill E Pilgrim
@bago: Why yes, yes they did.
But so do the ones in Tweets, right? A, b, c, d, etc.
Tolstoy was just more creative at naming characters, what can I say.
meh
Who are you and what have you done to John Cole?
Silver Owl
Erickson is oh so tough in a very boring, juvenile, ignorant and immature way. Has he gotten out of middle school yet?
Tsulagi
There you go, picking on RSSF Commander E2. He’s not retarded, just specially challenged. Like on Monday gushing about Bunning’s “one-man filibuster” principled stand. Then on Tuesday when the R-bagger meme changed, even his own front pagers terming media reports characterizing Bunning’s action as a filibuster idiotic, he joined in. Without even blinking an eye he was calling yesterday’s EE an idiot. Takes special skill.
Then on Wednesday, today, you get the sense there may be a soulmate hunt in “rough men at the ready” dreaming Commander EE’s not too distant future. Flaming the establishment GOP…
Say what you will about E2, but he loves him some attractive men of color if they’re
domconservative enough.kommrade reproductive vigor
Threats from someone with the TwitHandle Ewe Rickson also fail to cause trembling in the boots.
Sounds like Mickey Kaus’ prom date.
Bunning style objections? Let’s see: Jackass holds his breath, people kick him in the gut and shout BREATHE MUTHAFUCKA!
Cyanotic jackass lays curled up and gasping on the ground.
O. Noz.
Reginald Perrin
“For almost 200 years, the policy of this nation has been made under our Constitution by those leaders in the Congress and the White House elected by all the people. If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this nation has no future as a free society.”
Know who said that? Richard Fucking Nixon. I can’t believe I’m still nostalgic for the old reprobate, even now that GWB is out of office. Who knew that Dick Nixon would one day define what is meant by an honest Republican?
Tecumseh
This is all great in theory but I have several areas of concern about all this-
-Did the Bunning affair have any resonance to anybody besides hippie bloggers and if it did, did it make people mad at the Republicans or did they take a “a Pox on both of your houses” stand. Or maybe they saw Bunning as a hero for taking a brave stand against government spending on unemployed hobos?
-Now that the Republicans are demonizing and lying about reconciliation and what the Democrats want to do, will they be reprimanded for it? If so, the press will have to call out Republican lies or explain all of the facts to the American People. Judging how reporters can’t seem to even get their facts right on the path the Democrats have to take on HCR, I doubt this will end well.
-The well-known inability of the Democratic Party to even do basic political messaging correctly.
trizzlor
This is a good post, and I agree with Cole, but (in typical Democrat style) I think you have to be very careful with a bring-it-on race to double down. When I can take this post and replace all the D’s with R’s to get John Cole circa 2005, I get worried about my position.
Let’s compare Bush’s social security reform; that was a nearly equally important effort for the GOP and had similar justification (retirees dying in the streets, etc.). Yet, I’m sure many here would have supported Bunning style tactics and general nastiness to prevent it from getting passed. Just as people would have supported conflating reconciliation for the whole bill with reconciliation for the fixes because they are effectively the same and that’s the only way the gun-toting rubes will understand what’s at stake.
Now, at some point you have to look at the facts and decide that this is the right thing to do. Bet let’s not let “the right thing to do” become more important than looking at the facts.
Or shorter: concern troll is concerned.
SIA
This has to be in my top 5 best BJ posts. Well done.
Martin
Oh, please let Ewick be right. Let’s have the GOP filibuster the military appropriations. Maybe they could even filibuster the SOTU next year – stand up the entire time with their fingers in their ears giving a 2 hour long raspberry to the president. Yeah, that’ll seal the deal for the GOP in 2012!
JenJen
Erick’s twitter feed never fails to amuse. I love the one last night where he said Rick Perry’s primary victory was a triumph for the Teabaggers. Uh, wut??
Dr. Morpheus
@someguy:
I’ve actually gotten my hopes up that this will be accomplished now that a few more Senators have signed on with Bennet.
I know, I know, but I remain a cock-eyed optimist.
twiffer
okay, but didn’t bunning’s obstructionism backfire so catastrophically thhe rest of the republican party was tossing him to the wolves? if that’s going to be the result, then hooray! the end result was a general consensus that he was being a dick, and while it held up the vote, he got nothing out of it.
MNPundit
WILL OF BOTH PARTIES?
What kind of FUCKING BULL SHIT IS THAT? The Republicans SUPPORTED HIM and we have statements to fucking PROVE IT. They were happy to let Crazy Jimmy take the heat but they liked screwing the Dems. It was only when the Dems were moving forward to actually expose their tremendous bull shit brutality that they suddenly started pushing for the bill.
Tonal Crow
Oh please don’t throw us in the Bunning Patch! Nooooo!
eyepaddle
Sing it brother Cole!
This is a good way to end the afternoon, a scathingly entertaining blog post, and the administration showing (if ever so reluctantly) some ‘nards, things might actually get accomplished yet….
And the freakout will be teh awwwwssuuummmmmmmm
xian
I find it amusing that his twitter handle is “Ew! Erickson”
SRW1
Tough shit.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Erick, Son of Erick, has the initials ‘EWE’? No wonder he’s a bleating asshole.
cat48
Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit for lack of transperency on all the “deals.” Wonder if this will delay passage? Anyone know? .When they were just on TV, took credit killing last HC (clinton’s)
Tonal Crow
@cat48: Not having seen the lawsuit, I cannot say definitively. But campaign promises are basically never actionable.
mcc
Searching on google news for “judicial watch health care” I find nothing.
kay
@cat48:
If it’s like the lawsuit they filed in December of last year, the argument goes like this: Obama and others met with various individuals and groups. AARP, Planned Parenthood, etc. Those two were named.
Obama and others in the WH meeting on health care are thus a de facto “committee” that is subject to a federal disclosure law.
I see huge problems with that. Anytime the President and someone on his staff met with anyone, they would be subject to disclosure laws under the “de facto committee” idea.
Hillary Clinton had an actual entity, a committee, and she wasn’t the President. Two big differences.
Krissed Off
@Reginald Perrin:
This is priceless.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Tecumseh: People protested. Link: wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=12072180
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Told you so. But I am an Obot independent fanatical follower sycophant, so what do I know. OH@@ and democrat party traitor/quitter etc……etc’//////
Tenzil Kem
Media discussions of reconciliation seem to presuppose something like a 50-and-a-half vote squeaker. But is there any reason to think that will be the case (for the sidecar fixes, not the public option)? Are any Dem Senators coming out and saying they won’t vote for the sidecar? And is there any reason to hope someone will, when all is said and done, look at a 56 or 57 or 58 vote majority and say, you know, that’s pretty damn close to 60?
mcc
@Tenzil Kem: Just a wild guess, but I don’t think anyone (for or against the bill) not actually employed in the media will care about how many votes the bill does or doesn’t pass by. People will care about whether or not it passes.
Mnemosyne
@Chyron HR:
You owe me a keyboard.
redoubt
@dmsilev: Newt–may he be cursed to the fifth generation. I’d been with the government three years when Newt pulled his temper tantrum. There’s nothing funny about standing in line, outside in the cold, to apply for unemployment benefits that may or may not be funded (but I’m sure almost everyone here knows this already).
Almost ten years later here he comes to the agency; I think he was looking for a consultancy. Even though Repugs are in charge at the top here, everywhere else he’s looking at wall-to-wall Democrats. Some of whom were here then and were now in charge of hiring.
mclaren
Well, John, that all sounds very hopeful and gung-ho, but the reality on the ground of current polling shows a huge win for the Republicans this November.
So it looks as though the problem child in the neighborhood is headed for a 6-figure annual salary with all the benefits and a supervisory job title in return for slashing all the tires of the cars in the neighborhood and smashing in windows and setting fire to peoples’ dogs.
You have to give the Republicans credit: they said health care would be Obama’s waterloo, and it was. They said they’d break him, and they did.
asiangrrlMN
I’m sorry, did Erick the son of Erick say something? Every time I see his twit handle, all I can think of is ewe. Which, unfortunately, leads me to the Mickey Kaus joke. Which, then leads me to needing to bleach out my brain with lye.
Really like the fire in this post, Cole. Keep preaching it, and we’ll be here give you an amen.
@Dr. Morpheus: By the way, are you Morpheus as in the god of sleep? Because if you are, I need to kick your ass.
Steeplejack
@Reginald Perrin:
Don’t believe I’ve seen your handle here before. Loved your TV series.