Sinema Bearhugs Filibuster As GOPers Prepare To Use It To Kill Sweeping Voting Rights Bill

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) having a good day today.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) doubled down Monday on her refusal to blow up the filibuster ahead of the Senate’s highly anticipated vote on the For The People Act/S. 1, the Democrats’ sprawling voting rights package that Republicans are fully expected to block via the filibuster.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1378562

I count Senator Sinema as a Goober. And I sent an email to her saying she has lost my vote and support. She’s a Republican Goober in a democrat disguise.and she blown her support here in AZ.
Any member of the Senate supporting the filibuster is against Americans voting and that cannot get more fundamental.
Elsewhere I posited that Senators and Reps should be subject to the same voting restrictions we see popping up around the country. To get legislation voted on the members should show ID and prove their address. Not eating or drinking while waiting to vote. No jabbering with each other while waiting No voting outside certain hours. And all the rest.

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“Heads, you win. Tails, I lose. Uh, wait…”

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In her op-ed, Sinema does to logic what Germany did to Poland in 1939.

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An ignorant trollop with more power than sense.

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BREAKING not NEWS!!!

WASHINGTON —Blasting the For the People Act, Senator Mitch McConnell claimed that the bill’s passage would bring the United States “to the brink of democracy.”

“The Democrats can dress this bill up any way they want, but their real agenda couldn’t be clearer,” the Senate Minority Leader said. “They want to turn the United States of America that we love and cherish into a democracy.”

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Please for the love of all things sacred will some reporter ask her and Manchin what good is having a majority in the Senate if they can’t help move Democratic Party goals through Congress? If the past is prologue McConnell if he get to be Majority Leader again will flip, rampage through comity, and will we be better off then?
If the Republicans can chip away at who can vote, who counts and determines the winner of the voting, and the SCOTUS wants Congress to fix laws, write new laws about how pre-clearance should work and yet bipartisanship has been blown out of the water does make governing any better?

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Except that is actually how Mitch McTurtle thinks. One party rule. Kindly vote. Now move along citizen.
edit
I should not post what I wish would happen to McTurtle. Remember those bruises a while back?

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Let’s hope that the same voters who put Kelly in the Senate re-unite to remove Sinema.

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Yeah, but one party would pass popular legislation while the other would force their moderates to vote on truly terrible and unpopular policy or own their “do nothing” philosophy without a filibuster to blame it on.

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I can tell you that a whole lot of folk here in Tucson that I am acquainted with count Sinema as a Goober (as I term GOPers). They’re very displeased. Now the right wingers where my son lives in Mesa, AZ are very mildly happy with her as the folk up in Mesa are faaar right wing.

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Sinema;'s call for ‘a debate on the filibuster’ will not take place as it will be filibustered.

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Shorter Kyrsten Sinema to all the Democrats who helped elect her in AZ and Biden nationwide, especially Black and Hispanic voters:

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"Sinema argued in a Washington Post op-ed that her position is ‘based on what is best for our democracy’ and that the filibuster ‘compels moderation…’”

Total. Double. Standard.

So the states get to play by one set of rules – but the feds have to play by different ones?!

  • How many states have filibusters?
  • How many states passed voting restrictions with a 60% super-majority?
  • How many states required bi-partisanship when they rammed through this attack on democracy?

If simple majorities are good enough at the state level, then they’re good enough at the federal level.

And if the states broke those “moderation” rules that Sinema, Manchin, and McConnell claim to love, then they have an absolute obligation to put the brakes on this nightmare headed down the tracks from partisan state leges.

The political messaging here isn’t hard; why aren’t we seeing it?

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One thing Mitch McConnell got right and it blows up Sinama’s arguments against filibuster reform:

Passing a voting rights act to assure majority rule means it is very unlikely the GOP in its current form will take back power in the next several years.

One other thing needs to be mentioned however, what gives the GOP power to pass laws that lock in minority rule in the states and for picking federal representatives was McConnell blowing up the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. That is the dirty truth about all of this is if you did not have a Republican Supreme Court led by Chief Injustice John Roberts, who more so than Donald Trump is the most important and Republican and not conservative in America, we would not be having this discussion as no impartial person who reads the constitution and takes an oath of office could possibly find what the states are doing constitutional.

That is but for what McConnell did to the Supreme Court mostly by ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees there would be no need for the “For the Peoples Act” because we would have a Supreme Court that acted for the people.

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An excellent thread to read:

.

The question of whether to reform the filibuster boils down to whether we want a functional government or a dysfunctional one. This is how the Framers saw it. This is why they opposed the filibuster or anything like it, and why they created the Senate as a majority-rule body. 1/

— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) June 22, 2021
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Welcome to the sandlot of politics!
Remember that the House does not have a filibuster as the Senate does and they seem to get by OK. Originally the filibuster consisted of a Senator blocking a bill by talking. Controling the floor and halting Senate business. Now it has evolved into a blocking system hurdle where a 60 vote super majority must be passed before legislation can even be discussed let alone denied or passed by a simple majority vote. That’s the basis of Mitch’s power. A 60 vote hurdle before business can be worked on. Thats not sensible or rerasonable.

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I used to believe Sinema was corrupt or a GOPer. After reading her Op-Ed, I think she is simply stupid.

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Why fight against against the Confederacy? They might counterattack and regain what they lost. Better to just let them do what the fuck they want instead. Who cares if slavery continues unabated? It’s just Black people. And we don’t want to make the Confederates unhappy.

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The electoral headwind wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t infused with Manchin and Sinema flatulence.

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