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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