The Democrats as usual look inept in the face of Senator Jim Bunning's (R.-Ky) "filibuster" on an extension of the unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The Republicans look far worse, as the heartless party they truly have become. The president has hinted that he might "take Bunning on" soon" if the hold is not lifted. What's he going to do, "bunt on Bunning?"
As I understand it, Bunning is not filibustering; he is using yet another Senate tactic to slow down anything the Democrats want to do, no matter how meritorious. Bunning has refused "unanimous consent" to the introduction of the legislation extending employment benefits and much else, including flood insurance.
"Unanimous consent" is the rule that allows any single Senator to refuse the introduction of any piece of legislation for no other reason than he or she wants to.
Someone ought to tell the president that he should stay out of this. If he should take on anyone it should be the Majority Leader and have him inform the Republicans that this nonsense has got to stop or filibustering is going to take on a new meaning.
All of these rules need to be taken up in the new year by the Senate and changed because, until they do so the Democrats have handed the keys to the future to the Republican Party, and the Republicans don't have a clue about the future. They only have the wacky worlds of vanishing government up in their heads.
The truth is, we can look at politics right now as one of two states of affairs: Either the Democrats have been outwitted once again by the other party, the party that's willing to take the rules to the extreme, or (2) the situation in D.C. is simply the playing out of the logic of conservative democracy with its arsenal of minority checks on the majority, a logic that dominates one party and that infects the so-called majority party, and the Senate leadership and the president know, who know how to count, know this.
So every piece of proposed legislation has to be cobbled together by going with hat in hand to the one or two or three conservative Democrats and now one or two moderate Republicans and finding out what they want and giving it to them.
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