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Opinion: McConnell's defense of the filibuster is a farce
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything possible to save the filibuster now that Republicans have lost control of the upper chamber. This rule allows senators to keep speaking on the floor to delay or block legislation that has majority support. The only way to stop a...
www.cnn.com
1/30/21
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything possible to save the filibuster now that Republicans have lost control of the upper chamber. McConnell, who is eager to hold on to power, is now defending the filibuster, arguing that the Senate should maintain the rule in the name of "deliberation and building consensus". Regardless of how the battle over the filibuster plays out, it is important to see why McConnell's arguments don't hold water. The notion that the filibuster is a source of comity couldn't be further from the truth. The rule, which is not written into the Constitution, but something that the upper chamber gradually adopted in the 19th century, has been used as a bludgeon against vital measures throughout much of American history. The filibuster, became a prominent strategy for southern Democrats to block civil rights bills in the 1950s and 1960s. Liberal senators at that time considered the rule anti-democratic, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights listed ending the filibuster as one of its key goals in 1951, alongside criminalizing lynching and ending segregation. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, famously set the record for the longest individual speech when he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for more than 24 hours.
Since the 1970s, the filibuster became a regular tool of partisan combat. Since Republicans are not interested in a robust federal government, tying the Senate up in knots fulfills their political goals. Under McConnell, the GOP accelerated the use of this political weapon during the Obama administration, blocking judicial nominations and stifling attempts to achieve immigration reform and gun control. The cost of the filibuster has been immense. Congress has lost its ability to legislate. Republicans — who already have disproportionate power in the Senate because the upper chamber gives smaller states the same number of representatives as larger ones — abused the filibuster. As a result, Democrats have not been able to push reforms on issues like climate change — even though a majority of Americans support them. And so, serious problems continue to fester in this country. There is no evidence that the filibuster helps create comity. In fact, the expanded use of the filibuster coincides with the most divisive and polarized periods in American political history. As the debates over the filibuster unfold, nobody should take McConnell's arguments very seriously. He's certainly within his rights to defend the filibuster as a tool of partisan obstruction, but he should at least be honest about it. Obama was right. It is a "Jim Crow relic," and one that keeps us decades behind where we need to be in public policy.
I also view the filibuster as anti-democratic and hope it is relegated to the ash heap of history.
PolitiFact - The history of the filibuster as 'Jim Crow relic'
Former President Barack Obama made some news when he delivered a eulogy for John Lewis, the civil rights activist and co
www.politifact.com