By Bob Gaydos

Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington,“ Hollywood’s version of the filibuster.

     “If it’s good enough for The New York Times, it’s good enough for us.”

      With those words of wisdom, a newspaper editor gave a willing but wary member of his staff a gentle shove into the world of editorial writing. The staff member was me. The editor was Bill Kennedy. The newspaper was The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. The time was late November, 1983. My maiden piece had appeared on Nov. 23,1983, the 20-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Serendipity. JFK and I share a birthday.

       On this day, I was asking Bill about an editorial I was thinking of writing, but which The Times, which circulated in our area, had just voiced an opinion on that morning. It was pretty much the same as what I had in mind and I was a little annoyed that they “beat” me. An ego thing.

      “Do we care?“ I asked.

      “Do our readers care, or even notice?” Bill answered.

      I wrote the editorial. The topic has long since been lost in my memory. But Kennedy’s message remained.

       It came to me in a flash a couple of weeks back as I was having a debate with myself on the wisdom of scrapping the Senate filibuster. I had pretty much decided I was all for it because, honestly, I am up to my eyeballs in Mitch McConnell single-handedly trying to destroy this country for anyone but the super-rich and super-white. With him as Senate majority leader for 10 years, any meaningful piece of social legislation proposed by Democrats had no chance. Now, as minority leader, he threatens to use the filibuster to kill Democrats’ sweeping voter reform law while having the gall to claim that Democrats refused to negotiate on it with Republicans.

         My only hesitation in writing this piece was that even some Democrats were defending the filibuster because of its “ttradition“ in the Senate and its supposed protection against a super majority running roughshod over democracy. Those arguments had pretty much lost out and I also thought about the threat the filibuster would pose to immigration reform, criminal justice reform and anything else President Biden might propose to advance racial and cultural harmony in the nation in the wake of four years of the divisive Trump administration.

         Enough of McConnell, already, I said to myself. Let’s save the country while I’m still alive to appreciate it. And then there was the Times editorial: “For Democracy to Stay, the Filibuster Must Go.”

        Well, thanks, Bill.

         Of course, I was so upset that I let them beat me on writing the editorial and didn’t want people to think I just copied theirs, that I waited a good two weeks before sitting down to do mine. This is it. The filibuster must go.

         Here’s why.

         Even though it is promoted as a barrier to a majority abusing its power over a minority, its primary application from the beginning has been to allow a minority of senators to exclude minorities in America from enjoying the rewards of democracy. First, it was slavery. More recently, civil rights legislation. Forget Jimmy Stewart in the movies. It is an outdated tool that has been used to preserve and promote bias. And for all it’s “tradition.” the Senate has already written exceptions into the rule.

         A brief description of the filibuster rule is appropriate here. When the Constitution was written, the framers kept it simple. In order for a bill to pass in the 100-member Senate, a simple majority of 51 votes was all that was needed. When Southern members took to long-winded floor speeches (filibusters) to delay or deter votes to abolish slavery, a rule was approved that requires the votes of 60 senators to end a filibuster.

        Modern senators being less fond of doing the actual work of talking for hours on end, in relays if necessary, to defeat a bill, amended the rule so that any senator can delay a vote on, and maybe defeat, any bill, simply by sending an e-mail saying he or she is filibustering it. That’s it. Go to lunch.

       In effect, that means the bill sponsor has to find 60 votes instead of 51. And, of course, there is no real debate on the bill. The Senate has already excluded money-raising bills and the appointment of federal judges and Supreme Court justices from the filibuster, allowing, most recently, Donald Trump to appoint three new justices to the high court.

         Some (including two Democrats) have suggested going back to the talking filibuster so that there is actual effort required to oppose and maybe some debate on the bill. But there has seldom been any debate provided by the filibuster and, even assuming Republicans are willing to argue for hours on end against expanding voting rights, Biden and the Democrats don’t have the time to waste.

          With Georgia leading the way, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are passing laws to make it much more difficult for members of minorities especially to vote. Basically, that’s un-American. More to the point, it’s racist as hell.

         The only way Republicans win congressional races in a lot of areas is by gerrymandering voting districts so that their candidate has a majority of Republican voters in the district. Even in Georgia, though, that failed when Democrats managed to put together a major get-out-the-vote effort. Republicans are basically scared to death they will not get elected again.

           Being able to vote should be one of the easiest things to do in this country. It’s almost insulting to have to write a column arguing that point. The fact that Republicans lied about the presidential election being stolen from Trump — and some still do — and make no bones about imposing restrictions on people’s ability to vote suggests that there is no debate to be had on this issue. Republicans just don’t want minorities to vote. They are not concerned with changing their policies to attract the voters, just denying the votes.

          Democrats have the presidency and control of both houses of Congress (but only the slimmest of majorities in the Senate) for two years. Midterm elections often produce changes in the power structure. Democrats can go a long way to repairing the damage done in the last four years by the Trump administration. (Biden has already started.) Democrats can go even further by passing sweeping voters rights legislation that will ensure that Congress is truly representative of the majority of the people rather than in the hands of a tyrannical minority interested only in power, not governing.

         Of course, what I just said is pretty much what The New York Times editorial also said. What can I say, great minds think alike. If it’s good enough for The Times (sorry, a slight edit, Bill), most of the time, it’s also good enough for me.

(Personal note: I wrote editorials for The Record for 23 years until I retired. Thanks, Bill.)
rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

A scene from "The Walrus and the Carpenter," by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Sir John Tenniel in 1871. (Wikimedia Commons)

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things,
Of cockroaches and congressmen,
Of cabbages and kings.”

– a paraphrase from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

By Emily Theroux

Have you ever wondered exactly how unpopular Congress is, when stacked up against stuff people really dislike – say, traffic jams, telemarketers, or root canal procedures?

Just ask the president of Public Policy Polling, whose latest survey instructed respondents to compare their disdain for our elected lawmakers to a range of unsavory things. “The fact that voters like (Congress) even less than cockroaches, lice, and Genghis Khan really shows how far its esteem has fallen with the American public over the last few weeks,” said Dean Debnam.

A new PPP poll found that cockroaches rated higher among voters than Congress did, by a margin of 45 to 43 percent. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A full 85 percent of participants revealed during the January 3-6 poll that they view our legislative branch as creepier than cockroaches, crawlier than head lice, more obnoxious than the most tedious pseudo-metal band, and a bigger pain in the ass than a colonoscopy.

Bored with conventional surveys of congressional approval by the public, PPP resolved to try a novel approach: testing the esteem in which Congress is held against 26 different loathsome* people, places, situations, or things. The 9 percent favorability rating of our current federal legislators, as seen after they narrowly avoided the fiscal cliff, ranks Congress beneath the following unpleasant entities and experiences:

1. Head lice (the possibility of whose removal, considering the GOP gerrymandering that’s made it almost impossible to dislodge entrenched Republican congressmen no matter how badly most voters want them out of office, boosted their score: Lice 67, Congress 19);
2. Brussels sprouts (not as yucky to grown-ups) 69, Congress 23;
3. The NFL replacement referees (for everyone but Packers fans) 56, Congress 29;
4. Colonoscopies (which at least provide vital information after the fact) 58, Congress 31;
5. Root canals (painful but mercifully temporary) 56, Congress 32;
6. Used-car salesmen (the lemons they foist on unwary buyers, apparently, don’t leave as sour a taste as threats to “shut down the government”) 57, Congress 32;
7. Traffic jams (you may get stuck in them, but not for 2-6 years) 56, Congress 34;
8. France (because nobody’s saying “freedom fries” these days) 46, Congress 37;
9. Carnies (who “may use loaded dice,” according to PPP, but still offer “a better chance at winning”) 39, Congress 31;
10. Canadian band Nickelback 39, Congress 32;
11. Genghis Khan 41, Congress 37;
12. DC political pundits 37, Congress 34;
13. Donald Trump 44, Congress 42; and, last but hardly least,
14. Cockroaches 45, Congress 43.

The Canadian 'nu metal' band Nickelback, which one Urban Dictionary reviewer described as exemplary 'of why our art is in a state of stale, regurgitated darkness.' Another said lead singer Chad 'sounds constipated on a permanent basis.' Opined a third: 'This band is like cyanide for my ears.' (Photo from social media site Fanpop; membership 69% white, 89% non-college-educated)

Things could be more calamitous for lawmakers, although not by much. Most people prefer Congress to venereal disease, telemarketers, and a certain cheating presidential candidate, among the few other things they found viler than our current crop of elected pols.

What did 85 percent of voters judge worse than Washington legislators? Lindsay Lohan, playground bullies, telemarketers, the Kardashians, John Edwards, lobbyists, Fidel Castro, gonorrhea, Ebola virus, communism, North Korea, and finally, at the bottom of the stinking heap of horribles, meth labs.

The United States of Absurdity

When I first heard the results of the new survey on the comparative unpopularity of Congress, my thoughts turned wistfully to a simpler time, my early childhood, when my father used to read us Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and Edward Lear. Daddy had a highly attuned appreciation for the absurd, which he set about to instill in his children as soon as we were old enough to listen to storybooks.

The March Hare and the Mad Hatter from Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “The Jumblies” and “The Pobble Who Has No Toes,” from Lear’s Nonsense Book; and “The Elephant’s Child” and Small Porgies (the Animal that came out of the sea) in Kipling’s Just So Stories, were my imaginary childhood friends.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings (AP Wirephoto, 1954)

At least it seemed like a simpler time. Dwight Eisenhower inhabited the White House, a fact that greatly disturbed my mother, who adored Adlai Stevenson and campaigned for him twice (in the days before it was only Republicans who ran losing candidates a second time for president). She chiefly resented Ike for failing to denounce Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, perpetrator of the post-World War II “Red Scare,” during the notorious commie-hunter’s reign of terror in Washington. “I will not get into the gutter with that guy,” said Eisenhower, who privately likened a fight with McCarthy to a “pissing contest with a skunk,” according to Eisenhower biographer Piers Brendon.

William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1985

My mother curtailed all unnecessary housework to sit rapt in front of our first TV set throughout the Army-McCarthy hearings in early 1954. After the Senate voted 67-22 to censure McCarthy that December, far-right wingnuttery simmered down for awhile. In 1962, conservative visionary William F. Buckley denounced founding “Bircher” Robert Welch for his extremist view that the entire federal government was infiltrated by communists, including Eisenhower and members of the Supreme Court. As Buckley wrote, in a 5,000-word “excoriation” of Welch’s delusional thinking, published in National Review:

“How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America.”

In 1964,  conservative GOP candidate Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election in a landslide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan tacked hard right again, and a steady, 30-year progression began toward conservative “limited-government” policies and culture-war social fundamentalism.

Our politics enter ‘a state of stale, regurgitated darkness’

Since Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, however, congressional Republicans appear to have lost their ever-lovin’ minds. Since the reactionary mid-term contests of 2010, the Tea-Party-bewitched House has abandoned any notion of compromise, and the once-staid Senate (which George Washington described to Thomas Jefferson as a “cooling saucer” for legislation passed by the House, used as if to cool one’s tea) has gone filibuster-crazy. Now, we’re stuck in a vortex of far-right recalcitrance and ideology. Together, they’ve led Democrats into a maze of gridlock with no apparent escape route.

Obama may have won reelection in 2012, but the balance of power hasn’t substantially shifted in 2013. The GOP continues to hold the House, with an ineffectual John Boehner still at its helm. The Republicans in the House, two years away from another campaign, entrenched in their gerrymandered districts, and beholden to powerful corporate donors, are beginning to forget the party’s post-election angst over what new direction it should take in light of its devastating election losses.

The Republican Senate minority under Mitch McConnell, currently digging in on obstructionist tactics against Obama’s cabinet nominees, acts as if the 2012 election never happened. The president has a traditional prerogative to appoint the cabinet he wants, barring influence-peddlers, convicted ax murderers, or proven zombies. (Chief obstructionist John McCain even said so, back when Dubya swaggered where Obama now stands as tall as possible, given the carnage done to our Constitution by total whack-jobs.)

The cockroaches, in this case, have nothing to do with cabinets, with cabbages or kings. This new, psychotic breed is scurrying out of the chamber pots, the ones with the Rs on their lids – both sets of them.

* * *

* I personally exempt Brussels sprouts and France, which I find unobjectionable, except for the fact that, during an excellent European adventure in 1972 (during which my first husband and I carried our belongings in backpacks and were thus considered “dirty hippies” by disapproving Parisian hoteliers), we were not offered continental breakfast. And don’t call me paranoid, but I swear, a chambermaid strategically rearranged the pieces on a chess board we had left in our room mid-game.

By Emily Theroux

Everyone’s carping about it on cable, retweeting it on Twitter, and regurgitating it on talk radio’s endless propaganda loop.

Is the Republican Party really undergoing a post-election “makeover”?

Will Southern-state “secession” incite spiritual intercession? Is “Grover over”? Will Mitch pull the switch on the filibuster? Can Cantor cease his banter over tax cuts? Will Jan call a ban on Arizona’s “papers capers”?

And will John McCain ever shut his cantankerous piehole about Susan Rice — and admit that the Vietnam War has been over for almost 38 years, the 2008 presidential campaign’s in the history books, and it’s way past time for him to retire from politics and join his fellow “ancient mariners” at the local VFW post, where he can park himself in a porch rocker and swaddle his voluminous bitterness, antipathy, and rancor in well-deserved oblivion.

Immediately after the election, Republicans seemed genuinely chastened by the expressed will of the people — at least the ones who would own up to it. But their policy prescriptions weren’t a lot more generous than I would have expected, incorrigible cynic that I am.

“Republicans must start over again,” declared George Will — with “a more likable candidate.” Charles Krauthammer ventured that “a single policy change” should fix what ails the Republican Party: Extending an olive branch to Latinos on immigration policy. “Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.”

Along came Louisiana Gov. Bobby”Jindal, shilling at warp speed. “Kenneth the Page,” who’s got his eye clearly affixed on his 2016 chances, told Politico the GOP “should stop being the stupid party.” Extremists within the ranks had made far too many “offensive, bizarre comments,” said Jindal. “We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism,” he added. “We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people, and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Then former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had to go and dump the party poohbahs back into the deep end of the latrine, declaring before the Republican Governors Association that the GOP’s “political organizational activity” needed “a very serious proctology exam.” (You’d think Watergate would have taught these good old boys never to excuse “organizational” flaws by blaming them on the plumbing.)

Even Rush Limbaugh was initially contrite (before lurching immediately afterward into a racist diatribe about “getting stuff,” redistribution of wealth, and what he called the lack of “a work ethic” among Obama voters). “This should have been a slam dunk,” Rush said, the day after Mitt Romney’s loss stunned a party that had convinced itself that Romney would win in a landslide. “But it wasn’t. There are reasons why. We’re gonna have to dig deep to find them, and we’re gonna have to be honest with ourselves when we find the answers to this.”

Rachel isn’t buying the ‘course correction’ crapola, either

If El Rushbo snorkeled back up from the depths of the sewer with answers of any kind, he hasn’t been letting on lately. For that matter, neither have many voices that aren’t quite as far right as he is on the wacko spectrum. And if you think about it, why didn’t Jindal, Barbour, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, or Erick Erickson experience their “epiphanies” on inclusiveness before Mitt Romney ran for the presidency and lost the brass ring for them?

Rachel Maddow says only the Beltway bobbleheads think the Republican Party has “learned its lesson” and is now genuinely following the pathway to reform.

“You know, it’s funny. If you listen to the Beltway talk about what’s going on in American politics right now, the major narrative … is about the sort of ‘course correction’ happening in the Republican Party, right? The Republican Party has ‘learned its lesson.’

“If only in the interest of self-preservation, Republicans are right
now giving up on these policy stances that cost them so much in the last election, that made their party seem essentially pre-modern — all of this stuff that alienated women and young people, and non-white people and gay people. I mean, if you listen to the Beltway media, the Republican course correction on this problem — post-election, a course correction is totally under way.”

But what are Indiana state legislators focusing on, now that they’ve “taken the proverbial post-election cold shower” that Maddow says a political party usually endures after it gets “shellacked” the way the GOP did on Nov. 6? Only three weeks after a stinging electoral rebuke of its culturally extreme Senate candidate, Richard Mourdock, the Hoosier State GOP resolved that “what they really need to do is doubly, triply, extra ban gay marriage,” she observed.

Never mind that same-sex marriage is already illegal in Indiana. The party has proposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions — an amendment that may affect more than 600 existing provisions of the Indiana code, which currently grant numerous connubial rights and conflict-of-interest protections to unmarried, opposite-gender couples.

Will GOP mutineers really ditch Norquist’s sacred pledge?

“Mutiny! Dissension in the ranks! A break in vows to the almighty Norquist!” wrote Jena McGregor earlier this week in The Washington Post.

Four GOP stalwarts — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rep. Peter King of New York, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee — stepped up over the weekend to declare that they aren’t afraid of Big Bad Grover and his hallowed Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a document he has brandished over the heads of elected Republicans since founding Americans for Tax Reform in 1986. The apostates say they’re willing to consider scuttling the pledge (whose signatories vow never to raise taxes, eliminate tax cuts, or even increase revenues) in order to reach a deal that would reform “entitlements” (at this point, defined as Medicare and Medicaid) and forestall the much-ballyhooed “fiscal cliff.”

Grover, who “dabbles in stand-up comedy,” isn’t laughing now, however, as more and more defectors swell the ranks of tax-policy renegades — even though he felt it necessary to point out that nobody has violated the pledge by actually voting for a tax increase. (Norquist studiously avoided uttering the word yet.) “We’ve got some people discussing impure thoughts on national television,” Norquist sniffed dismissively on CNN.

Will these trash-talking, inveterate obstructionists really deliver on their braggadocio about abandoning “self-deportation,” ditching the permanent 1 percent tax cut, and stooping to compromise with “the Democrat Party”?

I’m afraid I’ll believe that the day Mitch McConnell cashes in his chips and shuffles off to his old Kentucky home, and he doesn’t show signs of capitulating any time soon. Likewise with John Boehner — although I think he actually intends to follow through on his post-election concessions at the moments when he issues them. Things get prickly, though, when he returns to Congress to face those Tea Party dead-enders, who I’m almost certain give him ultimatums instead of the other way around.

This pack of “old, angry white guys” realizes that the GOP can’t win without the support of America’s fastest-growing demographic — but anyone who wants to give the Republicans  a second chance on immigration should beware their duplicity. (Please note that none of them is extending this sudden pro-Latino magnanimity to African-Americans.)

Right-wingers like Krauthammer and Hannity, who view amnesty for undocumented immigrants as both a palatable half-measure and “a Latino-winning electoral silver bullet,” in the words of conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, think they can sweep the 2016 election by “embrac(ing) amnesty and nominat(ing) Marco Rubio.”

Here’s the new, “reformed” GOP program thus far, in a nutshell: “Repeal and replace” the racially divisive talking points — and try to be a little more subtle about  ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class inequality, and religious tolerance. (Don’t be so strident on issues like food stamps, “unwed” mothers, welfare cheats, speaking English, lesbian TV hosts, lapel flags, rap music, and birth certificates.)

Strive whenever possible to sound more engaged, charitable, affirming, and humane. Speak the language of empathy. Persuade Latinos and women how much you truly care about and champion their concerns; pretend that you, like Romney said of Obama, want to lavish them with “gifts.” Make your words as syrupy and ingratiating as you can stomach, and you just might find that Dubya’s old “compassionate conservative” ploy will work for you, too.

If the GOP actually learned anything from the defeat of Willard Romney, it wasn’t how to “listen better” to the hopes and dreams of ordinary people. It was how to tell an ever-more-convincing lie.