When noble American champions like Franklin Graham leave the Republican Party and a potential split in the Republican Party is pondered by Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, we should ask ourselves why.
Here’s why.
Republicans currently hold a 54 — 46 majority in the Senate (which conservatives understandably thought would give Republicans the power to resist Barack Obama). However, even if all 54 Republicans vote “yes” on the “motion to proceed” (one of the Senate’s most insidious and hidden-in-plain sight secrets), at least 6 Democrats must also come to the Senate floor and vote “yes” or the motion is defeated.
This rule denies the majority in the United States Senate the essential capability to vote on, or even debate, critical, life and death legislation that may be supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans (like stopping the Iranian nuclear deal).
In other words, by doing absolutely nothing, with almost no accountability accruing to them or their president, the minority in the U.S. Senate can easily and nearly always prevent “the world’s most deliberative body” from actually deliberating no matter what the majority says or does.
How could we ever come up with a more perfect recipe for gridlock in this polarized, truth-be-damned political era in which we live?
Democrats know that the American people (even the esoteric Republican base) are largely oblivious to this secret, subterranean leverage they so routinely abuse, since the media never seem to report on this elephant (or donkey) in the room.
This has allowed Democrats to repeatedly force the House of Representatives, and especially its leadership, into an impossible conundrum: Either pass legislation that Democrats completely agree with, which enrages the principled, but misinformed Republican base, or allow Democrats to shut down the government, for which Republicans will be unjustly, but entirely, blamed.
In fact, the primary objective of Democrats leading up to the next election is to deliberately engineer an extended government shutdown. This is because both Democrats and Republicans have done extensive polling, and both know a government shutdown gives Democrats decisive leverage to retain the presidency and gain control of the U.S. Senate in next year’s election. This would mean that Democrats will control presidential appointments, gain complete control of the U.S. Supreme Court and turn what’s left of the U.S. Constitution into vapor.
The present rules and practices must be altered and the abuse of them must be raised to such a high public profile that it becomes no longer politically tenable to continue that abuse. Otherwise it will remain impossible to enact policies necessary to save this country.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has the seminal power to force a negotiated and bipartisan adjustment to (not to eliminate) the filibuster by using the threat of the “nuclear option” that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used less than three years ago. This solution is more fully explained in an expanded filibuster treatise I wrote in October.
Those who object to these changes often point out that Republicans were empowered by the filibuster to stop dangerous policy and overreach when they were in the minority. This is undeniably true. However, this one-dimensional argument does not take into account the long-term advantage of holding Democrats (both parties, to be sure) fully accountable for their actual positions and the performance of their own policies.
By continuing to stand idly by while Democrats use this “silent filibuster” to stoke the growing rage inside the Republican base, Republicans in the Senate hasten the day when they will indeed put themselves back into the minority (perhaps more permanently), at which time the Democrats will not hesitate to force changes in the filibuster for anything and everything on their agenda.
The present filibuster rules have made the United States Congress impotent against a rogue president, robbed it of its Article 1 Constitutional “power of the purse” and destroyed accountability in American government.
Unless clarity and accurate accountability make a comeback in America’s government, the American people may unwisely declare a pox on both Chambers of Congress and give up. If that happens, future generations, along with the Founding Fathers’ dreams for all that America might someday be, will be at profound risk.
Congressman Trent Franks is chairman of the House subcommittee on the Constitution. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
