MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show - 11 February 2009:
MADDOW: "In the spring of 2005, Senate Republicans, led by then-Majority Leader Bill Frist, started talking about something called the "nuclear option." The nuclear option was a put-up or shut-up ultimatum to Senate Democrats. Allow up-or-down no-filibuster votes on President Bush's judicial nominees OR ELSE. Or else Republicans would kill the filibuster. They would just get rid of it.
Well, now... you know, Republicans never really had to go nuclear, because Democrats were very afraid of this threat. Some of them went into 'I'm Afraid' deal-making mode at the time. Fourteen Senators - seven Republicans and seven Democrats - then struck a deal to allow President Bush's judicial nominees to go forward. Crisis averted. The filibuster lived. Bush got his judges. And Democrats kept the filibuster alive, although they promised not to use it very much.
When Republicans threatened to go nuclear on Democrats back then, it's because Democrats, they said, were abusing the filibuster. Here's what that looked like in that Congress - 54 filibusters when Democrats were in the minority at that time. Then when the Republicans became the minority in 2007... BOING! 112 filibusters.
Republicans now have a de facto standing filibuster on practically everything.
They've made it so that passing anything in the Senate requires 60 votes. A supermajority every time. This situation has never existed before. This was not the situation in ANY previous Congress ever. Really. I know that Beltway reporting always makes it seem like '60's normal. This is the way it's always been. Democrats did it too when they were in the minority.'
It is not true. This really has never happened before in the history of the U.S. Senate.
When Republicans were mad about Democratic filibusters in 2005 and they threatened to kill the filibuster altogether, Democrats were doing NOTHING, anywhere near as extreme as what is being done now.And so, finally, after starting to figure out that this is a problem, it's Democrats now who are coming around to a nuclear state of mind."
VP BIDEN (VIDEO): "I've never seen a time when the operating norm to get anything passed was a supermajority of 60 votes. No matter what the bill is, it's filibustered. It's required to get 60 votes. You can't rule by a supermajority. You can't govern if you require a supermajority."
MADDOW: "That man is both the Vice President and the President of the Senate, don't forget, who would have a key role to play in setting or changing Senate rules.
Even long-time defenders of the filibuster, like Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, are now acknowledging that the Senate has become, in Sen. Dodd's words, 'a dysfunctional institution,' describing Republicans current use of the filibuster as 'abusive.'
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is also sounding the alarm, telling Roll Call newspaper 'a Constitutional majority is 51 votes ... Is there never anything that can be done without 60 votes? ... It isn't legitimate in terms of passing legislation.'
Speaker Pelosi noted that more than 200 bills that have passed the House are bottled up in the Senate now, a vast majority of which got more than 50 Republican votes when they passed the House. Today we move a bit
(Discusses Sen. Tom Harkin's new plan to break filibuster. Harkin calls filibuster abuse 'unprecedented.')An as the Republicans get ready to cry foul over what Senator Harkin is trying to do, they should check the archives of themselves from back when they tried to go nuclear a few years ago.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (2005 VIDEO): "Let's get back to the way the Senate operated for over 200 years - up or down votes on the President's nominee, no matter who the President is, no matter who's in control of the Senate..."
MADDOW: "Sen. McConnell, there calling for up-or-down votes on nominees no matter who's in control. This week President Obama's nominee to head up the National Labor Relations Board went before the Senate. His nomination was killed when 33 Senators voted to filibuster him. Thirty-three Senators voting to block an up-or-down vote, including Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell."
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (2005 VIDEO): "... up or down votes on the President's nominee, no matter who the President is, no matter who's in control of the Senate..."
MADDOW: "Starts with 'H,' four syllables, rhymes with 'Zypocrisy.'
- snip -
Joining us now is someone whom I suspect MAY disagree with me on this, former Chairman of the Democratic Party, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Gov. Dean, good to see you. Thank you."
DEAN: "Well, I only mildly disagree with you, Rachel. I'm always in favor of anything nuclear revolving Republicans. They are so irresponsible, they really... honestly, I've said this for a long time, they put the good of their party ahead of the good of the country, and when that happens they don't deserve to be in office anymore, and I think we're there now.
- snip -
"It will help some focusing on Republican obstructionism, because the Republicans are obstructionists. They have nothing to offer. They haven't offered anything.
- snip -
Our problem is we're not tough enough. If George Bush had been President of the United States and wanted health care reform, an unlikely scenario, but if he had wanted it, it would have been on his desk in eight months, by August, because George Bush used reconciliation, the budget process, to pass everything with 51 votes, five times. We haven't used it once. We haven't shown the spine to do that, and we need, once again, a spinal transplant in the Democratic Party to play hardball.
This is, the country's at stake here. This isn't about Republican versus Democratic anymore. This is about whether we want to move forward and have real reform or whether we want to let a small ideological minority screw up the country so they can take power again and I don't think we ought to put up with that."
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