No, not majority rule, minority rule.
The senator from Texas hatched a “plan” to “defund Obamacare” by threatening to shut down the federal government. He got a lot of true-believer conservatives—especially in the Republican-controlled US House—to buy into the scheme. But the Texan never rounded up significant support for his approach in the upper chamber.
So the whole defunding scheme—which was never grounded in budgetary reality—has begun to look more and more like the sort of mess that costs political parties seats. House Republicans are furious.
After Cruz waged a national campaign to get the House to follow his strategy, and after they did indeed vote as he said they must, the Texan acknowledged that Senate Democrats could simply strip the House’s defunding language from the continuing resolution, pass a measure that would avert a shutdown and call the House’s bluff.
Even as Cruz was abdicating responsibility his own strategy, he was telling House Republicans to “stand firm.”
They were incredulous.
Congressman Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican who voted for the House version of the plan, said on The Laura Ingraham Show, “I think the strategy that Ted Cruz has been advocating for—it’s really hard to win when you can’t get the Senate on board and he’s proving that by the very nature of his surrender.”
But Duffy wasn’t finished.
“You can’t talk to the American people, you can’t talk to our bases on this strategy, and then completely roll over,” he said of Cruz. “Thank God he wasn’t there fighting at the Alamo!”
Ouch!
That’s not the kind of talk that Canada’s favorite son in the 2016 Republican presidential race likes to hear.
So Cruz is thinking fast.
And he’s got a new strategy.
End majority rule.
We’re not talking the back-door strategy of filibuster gamesmanship. Cruz wants Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to save him from the slings and arrows of his fellow partisans.
Reid plans to have the Senate vote on removing the Obamacare language from the continuing resolution. To do that, a simple majority is required. But Cruz is asking Reid set a sixty-vote threshold for addressing the defunding issue.
“The Senate, generally on controversial votes, we work out an agreement for it to be subject to a sixty-vote threshold,” Cruz declared on Fox News Sunday. Otherwise, “the majority is going to run the minority over with a train.”
Cruz is wrong on principle: the majority should rule.
And he is wrong on the facts of how the Senate operates when dealing with controversial legislation, amendments and nominations.
During the gun-safety debate that played out earlier this year with regard to the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013, a stack of amendments passed or failed on votes of 52-48, 54-46, 57-43 and 58-42. And the history of the Senate is filled with instances where major legislation advanced by relatively narrow majorities.
Justice Samuel Alito sits on the US Supreme Court based on a 58-42 vote.
Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a 52-48 vote.
Senate Democrats (and at least a few Republicans) might have been quite pleased to operate under Cruz’s sixty-vote threshold for those controversial confirmations. But no such standard applied in 2006, when Alito was up for confirmation; nor did it apply in 1991, when the Thomas nomination was being considered.
The Cruz model for minority rule exists in the head of Ted Cruz.
But it cannot be found in the Senate rules.
Reid says he plans to follow “basic Senate procedure” when it comes to the continuing resolution.
The majority leader does not appear to be getting substantial pushback on that position from Senate Republicans. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and Senate Republican whip John Cornyn, the senior senator from Cruz’s homestate of Texas, have distanced themselves from Cruz’s latest gambit. And one of the most serious conservatives in the Senate, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, says Cruz is “not realistic” and of the Texan’s overall strategy, “It’s not a tactic that we can actually carry out and be successful.”
A high-ranking Democratic aide says of Cruz, “No one is taking him seriously on this.”
No one should.
The Senate ought to be a deliberative body.
It ought to have thoughtful debates, extended debates.
But, ultimately, the Senate is a legislative chamber in the federal government.
It must legislate and govern.
And it cannot be the plaything of petty partisans who seek to rewrite the rules in order to avoid accountability within their own party caucuses.
This is not about Democrats and Republicans. This is not about liberals and conservatives. It is not even about Obamacare.
It’s about Cruz.
And a plutocratic fantasy that says the United States should be governed not by the majority of citizens or senators but by a minority. Perhaps even a minority of one Tea Party cowboy from Calgary.
Original Article
Source: thenation.com
Author: John Nichols
No comments:
Post a Comment