The United States Senate: The Graveyard of Conservatism
Earlier this week, The House of Representatives passed
the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”, which would outlaw abortion
after 20 weeks with exceptions for rape and incest as well as to save the life
of the mother. Three Democrats, Collin
Peterson of Minnesota , Henry Cuellar of Texas and Dan Lipinski of Illinois ,
voted in favor of the measure while Republicans Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania voted against it. Seventeen
states have already enacted similar legislation into law. While most
pro-lifers would probably rather see Roe v. Wade take its rightful place
in the ash-heap of history, a 20-week abortion ban is certainly a good
start.
As someone who was born at 29 weeks gestation and
whose mother works with premature babies for a living, I know for a fact that
premature babies are a lot more than just a “clump of cells.” Unfortunately, most Democrats would rather
agree with the talking points of their loyal donors at Planned Parenthood and
NARAL than agree with the facts.
While President Trump has indicated he would sign the
bill if it passes both houses of Congress, the bill’s fate remains uncertain as
it goes into the Senate. Most Democrats
will probably oppose the measure, which needs 60 votes to pass. Since most moderate Democrats have been
purged from the Senate, very few Democrats exist that will support conservative
legislation. On top of that, more than a
few Republicans do not support conservative principles, partly because of their
resentment towards President Trump. For
these reasons, I have dubbed the United States Senate “The Graveyard of
Conservatism.”
During an interview
with Sean Hannity last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan presented a graphic showing
that the House has passed 337 bills during the first eight months of the Trump
Presidency, way more than the number of bills passed during the same time
period of the previous four Presidents.
The Speaker then provided another chart showing the number of bills
passed by the House that are stuck in the Senate as of September 22. That number stands at 274, way higher than
the number of House-passed bills stuck in the Senate after the first eight
months of the Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton, and George H.W. Bush
presidencies. I think President Trump
had it right when he pointed out at his recent Alabama rally that eight Democrats control
the Senate. You can’t blame the gridlock
in the Senate on gerrymandering.
The filibuster rule, which allows Senators in the
minority party to block legislation until 60 Senators agree to invoke cloture,
causes much of the gridlock in the Senate.
The Speaker explained that many Senate Republicans want to keep the
filibuster rule just in case the Democrats ever retake the majority in the
Senate. Everyone knows that the
Democrats would surely abolish the filibuster in a second if it was preventing
the passage of legislation important to them.
While abolishing the filibuster would certainly help
in some cases, it would not have helped with passing an Obamacare repeal bill;
which a majority of Republicans could not even get behind. Republicans tried to pass Obamacare repeal
using “budget reconciliation”, which requires only a simple majority. To those of you who think the Senate rules
are too complicated, I could not agree with you more. An Obamacare repeal barely passed the House
earlier this year, with twenty Republicans; most of them moderates, voting
against the bill. The passage of an
Obamacare repeal looks unlikely for the 115th Congress as the
Republicans’ narrow 52-48 majority leaves them little room for error. If the bill moves too far to the left, it
will alienate the most conservative Senators while if it moves too far to the
right, it will alienate the most moderate Republicans. Since the budget reconciliation window closed
on September 30, any attempt to repeal Obamacare will now require 60
votes. The Democrats have united against
any Republican effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act; instead offering to
help “fix” the unfixable law. Their
emotional attachment to their favorite President’s signature legislative
achievement severely clouds the Democrats’ judgment. Unfortunately, Republicans cannot begin to
repeal and replace the Senators who held up the Obamacare repeal bills via
primary challengers until at least 2020.
Despite every attempt by the GOP leadership to make the moderates happy,
including the drafting of a “skinny repeal” that would keep many of Obamacare’s
provisions in place, they seem to want nothing else other than Obamacare to
remain intact. These people refused to
support a “clean repeal” despite voting in favor of one when they knew
President Obama would veto it. To those
who promised to repeal Obamacare yet voted against doing so when it actually
counted, I give you four Pinocchios.
The Senate has already abolished the filibuster rule
for judicial nominees, who now require only a simple majority vote for
confirmation. Senate Democrats,
including their newly minted majority leader Chuck Schumer, made it very
difficult for President George W. Bush to fill judicial vacancies; successfully
using the filibuster to block the nominations of any judge to the right of
Susan Collins; including Miguel Estrada and Charles Pickering. In a hilarious twist of irony, the Democrats
said that Pickering had a bad record on civil
rights despite the fact that he spent the 1960s prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan in
Mississippi . The
Democrats used the filibuster to successfully block ten of President Bush’s
judicial nominees. Eventually, a group
of Senators from both parties, dubbed the Gang of 14, agreed that Democrats
would stop filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees in exchange for the
Republicans’ promise never to invoke the “nuclear option.” Following the Gang of 14 Compromise, only
five of the ten previously filibustered nominees got confirmed; as three of the
nominees had already withdrawn their nominations. When Republicans gave the Democrats a taste
of their own medicine during the Obama Administration, then-Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid abolished the filibuster for lower court nominees, keeping it
in place for Supreme Court nominees until earlier this year, when Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abolished the filibuster rule for Supreme Court
nominees in the wake of the Democrats’ attempts to filibuster Neil Gorsuch.
Nearly a year into his Presidency, many cabinet
positions in the Trump Administration remained unfilled. As of right now, 166 of President Trump’s
nominees await Senate confirmation. The Democrats have demanded
30 hours of floor debate prior to any up or down vote on a nominee, which makes
the cabinet-filling process take a lot longer.
Only in the swamp would this type of obstructionism take place.
The voters will decide during next year’s midterm
elections whether the Senate will continue to serve as the Graveyard of
Conservatism. Looking at the Senate map
next year, Republicans have quite an opportunity to elect some conservative
Republican Senators committed to Making America Great Again; as five Senate
Democrats have to defend their seats in states that the President won by double
digits. If Republicans squander this
amazing opportunity and the Democrats actually manage to pick up seats, then
that will make passing the Trump agenda, especially the appointment of
originalist judges to the Supreme Court, even harder. If you live in a state with a competitive
senate election next year, get out and vote to “Make the Senate Great Again!”
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