Cowards
This weekend I started thinking that when the Republicans get around to the brazen cheating required to remove the filibuster, that the Democrats had damn well have somebody on the floor flibustering who, when told that they aren’t recognized to speak, answers back that the chair isn’t recognized to change the cloture rules as they just did, and they will keep speaking, because if you check your history book, you’ll see that Senators have been filibustering for two hundred years, and they aren’t about to stop simply because Bill Frist tells them to. I was hoping that maybe just maybe the Democrats would manage to get an image on television of the Capitol Police escorting a speaking senator off of the floor of the Senate. Something that would look very much like a Coup d’Etat, or at least something where the Democrats, outnumbered and outgunned, were seen to stick passionately to principles of national consensus, while Republicans ruthlessly took advantage of their power to push forward their own agenda.
Or, maybe when it came to a vote, enough Republicans would want to maintain the spirit of the Senate and not vote to start screwing with the filibuster. They’d be seen as reasonable people, willing to put the national interest before their party agenda.
Maybe not. This morning I woke up to the news that John McCain brokered a compromise on the filibuster, in that the Democrats will agree not to filibuster, thus preserving their right to filibuster.
Maybe instead of Red States and Blue States it should be Red States and Green States. The Red States eat red mad cow meat, drive pickup trucks, and believe that it is their way or no way. The Green States sip soy-cream lattes and prance around in their SUVs effeminately crying over how bad it is that the whole place is run by Reds and when the meat-eating Red Staters bark ever viler commands the Green Staters flutter their wrists and collapse on the ground in a cowardly heap and cry about the sad fact that life is hard and we’re just oh so misundertood. If only more people listened to Garrison Keillor . . .
Cowardly Democrats. No wonder I voted for Nader in 2000.
