The nuclear option: the people wanted it
I’ve noticed that quite a few of the senators who voted for the nuclear option justify it by saying some verstion of “the people wanted it.”
But actually, “the people” wanted cooperation between the parties, not increased polarization. “The people” wanted the end of Obamacare, and they didn’t even want Obamacare in the first place. “The people” are pulling away from liberalism (for the moment, anyway), just as the left seeks to solidify its power and entrench it in the federal judiciary.
The “people” who wanted the nuclear option were the people on the left.
Here’s Senator Baucus of Montana, who long ago used to be known as a moderate Democrat:
After talking to Montanans, it was clear to me this was the right thing to do,” said Sen. Max Baucus. “The people we work for are sick of gridlock keeping Congress from doing its job and it was time to stand up and do something about it.”
The people of Montana, who voted for Romney in 2012 by a 14% margin, cannot possibly feel this way about giving Obama and the Democrats in the Senate far more power, nor could Baucus actually think they do.
Chuck Schumer is another, although at least he has the excuse that his own state probably did want this to happen:
“The public is asking ”” is begging ”” us to act,” Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday [the day the Senate went nuclear].
But as the editors at the Chicago Tribune add:
Not at all. If the public is begging for anything, it’s for Congress to stand down from partisan enmity. Instead, Capitol Hill has gone to war.
There is no question that the nuclear option will increase partisanship, although it will streamline the ability of a bare majority to do what it wants. It was just as bad when the right proposed it. Now both sides will use it if they get the chance, and US policy will careen ever more wildly from one extreme to the other as each party comes to power—unless, of course, one party or other comes to dominate the political scene entirely.
It strikes me more and more that right now the House is our only line of defense against the left getting everything it ever wanted.
It strikes me more and more that right now the House is our only line of defense against the left getting everything it ever wanted.
Reid’s gambit is obviously so as to pack the DC Circuit with judges whose view of the Constitution is somewhat malleable. Makes me wonder how many of these judges might take a view of the House which somewhat restricts its ability to impede the left.
Lest you think I’m tinfoil hatting here, I’ll point to the DC Circuit’s smackdown of Obama’s trying to determine when the Senate was or was not in session. A more leftist judge would likely have ruled differently. Next up: the idea that spending bills do NOT have to originate in the House. Because people want to get stuff done. That last sentence will be the legal argument present to the Circuit Court.
“It strikes me more and more that right now the House is our only line of defense against the left getting everything it ever wanted.”
I used to think the same thing about the Supreme Court.
I’m also sick of hearing what “the people want.” As if they were a monolithic voting bloc, and all their wishes were even possible.
“The people” wanted free healthcare without anyone (except the rich) having to pay for it. We can see how well that’s working out.
The idea that the two sides in Washington are just being childish, that there are no real issues at stake or what they’re fighting over doesn’t matter is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
The Congress isn’t paralyzed by indifference or pettiness, but ambivalence. Huge difference there.
Those people who want Congress to move forward rapidly and give the appearance of a collegial, bipartisan body are the hard leftists who want their dreams enacted without delay and the mushy independent voters who pay no attention to the issues – to them they just think that gridlock seems unseemly. The MSM reinforces this stupidity and the Republic continues to slide toward liberal fascism. We all know that republics have never lasted long because – human nature. A republic requires an informed and engaged citizenry along with ethical men/women to represent them. We have neither. It is to weep.
Burn it all to ash and start back from square one.
Instead of a revolution where we go 360 degrees and end up where we started, a Re Evolution begins the process of social engineering from one man + one woman once again.
“It strikes me more and more that right now the House is our only line of defense against the left getting everything it ever wanted.”
Does anyone here think Boehner is anything but a “Paper Tiger”? Talk about a Judas Goat, he just wants to get along and be liked by the Other side and the MSM. What he fails to understand is that the other side knows he has no backbone and no principles and is a bug to be stepped on. He just wants to be Captain for a Day along with those fools Cantor and McConnell in the senate.
So hunker down and lets hope things stay together and the People stay awake or wake up in 2014. But with the number of people getting stuff from the Govt and their lack of knowledge about this country, the outcome is in doubt. 🙁
Could a little pressure be put on Dem senators to make them justify voting for Reid as majority leader? I think every possible issue should be used to make vulnerable senators uncomfortable.
J. J.,
Not republics, democracies. There’s a difference. The US government was designed as a republic with a very sluggish process for passing legislation to prevent tyranny of the majority. The Senate was supposed to enforce this since it didn’t represent the people directly, but represented the State governments. The Senators were selected by the State legislatures which have somewhat different priorities than the public at large, especially paying for and managing State government. The States, through the Senate could act as a brake on the Federal government. The 17th amendment killed that brake. For example, without it the Federal government wouldn’t be able to pass unfunded mandates like Medicaid, which is very costly to the States. Here in MA it’s nearly half the budget.
With that kind of government it’s hard to ram through legislation fueled by momentary passions and that doesn’t have very broad support. Obamacare would never have stood a chance.
The Founders were very afraid of pure democracies which operate by simple majority rule. They spent a lot of time reading Aristotle’s Politics with its histories of all the 154 Greek constitutional democracies. Historically such states tore themselves apart quickly, first going full socialist and then devolving into a tyranny.
Paul in Boston, thanks for the correction. I knew that, but am becoming a bit sloppy in my dotage. My intentions are good, but the intent does not always mesh with the facts. 🙂
A republic is defined as:
“1. a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
2. any body of persons viewed as a commonwealth.
3. a state in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state.”
Unfortunately, the definition says nothing about the need for informed and engaged citizens to properly exercise their supreme power.
I was thinking of this:
“Alexander Tyler, a late 18th century Scottish history professor, had some comments on Democratic government that seem well placed today. His comments were not about the new American Republic that had just come on the scene, but about the rise and fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years prior.”
He suggested the following:
“….that true democracy is temporary in nature, and follows a sort of life cycle seen in the Athenian fall, and many other civilizations if you think about it. The life cycle includes the following stages:
1. Bondage to Spiritual Faith .
2. Spiritual Faith to Courage.
3. Courage to Liberty.
4. Liberty to Abundance.
5. Abundance to Complacency.
6. Complacency to Apathy.
7. Apathy to Dependence.
8. Dependence to Bondage.”
We seem to be somewhere in the 5-7 stages depending on one’s point of view. 🙁
It seems more and more to me as the years go by that the fundamental question of ALL human government is “the elite versus the people.”
People talk about American exceptionalism. What that means to me is that America was the first country that codified the idea that the governed had the same rights as the governors. Might did not make right, and when the rulers became overbearing the people had the right to revolt.
I can think of no other country that has that idea at its center. That’s why we kick ass, and everybody else is a wannabe.
A profound revelation that relates to American democracy in a roundabout way (stick with me…):
I once read a discussion of lightning bolts and quantum physics. Classically, lightning is a stream of electrons which are particles. The stream somehow knows the macroscopic path that minimizes resistance in the air in order to reach the ground. This is odd from a classical point of view because at any instant, the electrons can only see the electric field immediately adjacent to them. Sometimes, this field will be lower resistance in some directions than others, however these lower-resistance directions end up being “dead ends” in the wider scope. The electrons don’t take these paths…almost as if they “know” they aren’t optimal.
When one switches to a quantum physics perspective, this makes sense. In quantum physics, electrons are not discrete particles, but smeared-out clouds of probability. The electrons actually exist in all states, in all locations simultaneously. Those locations that “dont work” for getting the bolt to the ground are weeded out. Only the path that works remains, and BAM!…lightning bolt.
After hearing that, it occurred to me that the same phenomenon was at work in the other most successful theories:
— Evolution: Through random mutation, all paths are explored simultaneously. Given any environment, there are better and worse solutions for survival/reproduction. The paths that don’t work are weeded out.
— Economics: In capitalism, a great many more paths are explored than any other system. The market has selection criteria, and the solutions that don’t work are weeded out.
— Democracy: Many more paths are explored (especially with federalism) than other systems. Solutions that don’t work are weeded out.
Etc., etc.
You could say that the most successful systems in any field are those that maximize information, usually through an almost randomized process that covers all possibilities. When coupled with selection criteria that weed out failures, these systems produce optimal results.
This, for me, is the crux of the failure for all centralized planning. The rejection of this in the founders’ vision is why America kicks ass.
If someone can come up with a widely successful example in any other field that doesn’t follow this pattern, I’d love to hear about it.
Matt_SE,
It’s not just the central planners; it’s also a whole class of people who think that any information coming from flyover country is not worth putting in the mix. We have now a very large status-conscious group of low information voters who love to play card games (race, gender, wealth) to avoid searching for meaning and morality in their own lives. Fortunately, we also have a large group of people with real-life experience who won’t be dismissed. Right now, the latter group is trying to win by playing by the former’s rules, ie, ideological battles. That won’t work. William James described this. We don’t change our thinking about truth until we are hit by real experiences that contradict our beliefs, and even then, we do all we can to accomodate the new facts to our existing beliefs.
We need to confront the former group with real life experiences they can’t deny and then make them scramble to adapt their ideology. We need to crack their certainty. This maybe happening among some of the young who are now being confronted by lack of jobs, horrendous student debt, and Obamacare costs.
Isn’t this like that criminal who said “she was asking for it”?
@expat
“We need to confront the former group with real life experiences they can’t deny and then make them scramble to adapt their ideology. We need to crack their certainty.”
I find that the best lessons are taught by cold, impersonal reality. Otherwise, people tend not to learn the lesson (or proper lesson) when they have somebody else to blame. Call it the “bad parents” excuse: doesn’t it feel good to know all your problems were laid on you, man?
Conversely, when a hurricane hits you never see anyone shaking their fists at the sky and blaming God/Nature/Reality because they know that wouldn’t do any good. (Anthropogenic Global Warming in this case would be another “bad parents” excuse)
The Obamacare debacle is a rare thing in this light: a moment of clarity, unobstructed by bipartisanship or credible mitigation. This is wholly on the Dems, and they had both the time and money to make their dreams come true. Obamacare was the result.
Since it turned out to be a disaster, it ends up being an indictment of liberalism itself.
We need to point out the liberal disasters that we had nothing to do with. Then, explain how liberalism inevitably led to that end. Detroit would be a good example. California is and ongoing example, and soon NYC will be another.
I would add that turning our schools and colleges over to the victimologists was another disaster.
I think people need to slap the Left’s tools in the face with the claim or proof that they aren’t on the side of justice, first. Before going to the examples.