Friday, February 5, 2010

More Political Math

The Republicans want to talk about Massachusetts ad nauseam these days as well as New Jersey and Virgina, to a lesser extent. I have heard suggested that the Democrats have contempt for the voters since they haven't all changed their registration to Republican after those election results were in. Scott Brown won by a whopping 4.8 points and Drudge asks if he should run for president.

What about the other 533 elections? Do they matter? Should Republicans take notice? Of course, I am referring to the 435 house members, 100 Senators, and our Democratic president. How come all we hear about on Fox News is about 3 unique elections and not the others?

If the Republicans have any respect for the electorate, would they mount a Filibuster on nearly every bill? That certainly is not what the framers intended. In fact, it was the 48th year of our constitution - 1837 - before the Senate saw it's first Filibuster.

Clearly, a super-majority requirement in the Senate is not democratic. It is minority rule. The Senate should ditch the rule by a simple majority vote, which would certainly be upheld by the SCOTUS if challenged.

4 comments:

Mark Chaney said...

Do it, DITCH THE RULE! Right, good luck! They couldn't even get Health Care, Card Check or Cap and Trade passed with a Super Majority. You guys control it all, we can't stop anything - more excuses. Democrats are running for the hills, it is hillarious to watch - come on let's see some profiles in courage here.

Hags said...

Bax,

In retrospect, I think your guys could have gotten quite a bit done if they had tried to get a series of base hits as opposed to going for the grand slam.

I won't try to be the architect myself, but, it seems to me, that the Dems tried to rewrite 16% of the largest economy in the world. No legislative body is capable of doing that well.

SIngle, single, double, single, double might have been four runs,

Universal coverage is a nice sentiment, but for the vast majority the issue is cost not coverage.

My point is that the super majority strategy might have been more difficult to execute had the Ruling Party gone for more focused legislation. By designing such a grand plan they gave the majority of people something to fear or hate.

I think the Dems could look at their strategy and their decisions as creating the opening that allowed the Repubs to block them. It is a management thing: be accountable for your results and learn from your failures.

Or, they could just demonize the opposition and say "it wasn't my fault!"

All the best!

Hags

Baxter said...

In hindsight Hags, you are probably right. I still hold out hope for the Senate Health Care bill, passed by the House and cleaned up later.

If the governing party doesn't govern, it will be ugly for them in November. Collectively, they know this. However - only a few folks have to leave the reservation to screw it up.

Mark Chaney said...

If they had done this incrementally, I would have been on board. Let's fix portability first. Then move on to purchase options across state lines and so on. Actually if they had done this they could have focused on it for the entire term and would have won in each step, thus controlled the whole process.