Naked Emperor
The real Obama is coming into sight for the American people for the first time, and they don’t like what they see.
It’s not for nothing that Obama nuked the filibuster rule. Yes, Obama. Harry Reid would not have done it except with marching orders.
There’s plenty of commentary all around about how this is a desperate move by Obama, as he sinks in the polls and his most “historic” achievement — Obamacare — eats away at the Democratic Party like a flesh-eating wound.
Obama can pack open judicial seats with hard core partisans, and put his desired apparatchiks in positions of administrative power.
I expressed my view on the opportunity this presents, Democrats nuked the ratchet.
Oddly, I find myself agreeing with some commentators who normally are not on my side of the fence. This Dana Milbank column makes some important points, although he inaccurately also blames Republicans for allegedly abusing the filibuster, The Democrats’ naked power grab:
“Congress is broken,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789….
Here’s what then-Sen. Joe Biden said in 2005 when a Republican Senate majority threatened to use a similar “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority to carry the day:
“The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play . . . tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field. I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”
Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), one of just three Democrats who opposed his colleagues’ naked power grab, read those words on the Senate floor Thursday after Reid invoked the nuclear option. The rumpled Levin is not known for his oratory. But he is retiring next year and free to speak his mind — and his words were potent.
“We need to change the rules, but to change it in the way we changed it today means there are no rules except as the majority wants them,” Levin said. “This precedent is going to be used, I fear, to change the rules on consideration of legislation, and down the road — we don’t know how far down the road; we never know that in a democracy — but, down the road, the hard-won protections and benefits for our people’s health and welfare will be lost.”
The word “historic” is often tossed around in Washington, but this change ends a tradition dating to the earliest days of the republic. For the nation’s first 118 years, there were no limits on debate in the Senate. After 1917, cutting off debate, or reaching “cloture,” required a two-thirds majority. In 1975, that threshold was reduced to 60 of 100 votes. Even that lower minimum required lawmakers to cooperate with each other….
“If a Senate majority demonstrates it can make such a change once, there are no rules which binds a majority, and all future majorities will feel free to exercise the same power, not just on judges and executive appointments but on legislation,” Levin said Thursday. Quoting one of the Senate’s giants, Arthur Vandenberg, Levin said his fellow Democrats had sacrificed “vital principle for the sake of momentary convenience.”
If it was possible to make things even worse in Washington, Reid just did it.
There are dangers in what Obama has done. But the bigger point is that slowly but surely he is stripping down to who he really is.
From NSA spying run amok, to usurpation of congressional power through administrative orders, to lying to the American people about keeping their plans, the real Obama is coming into sight for the American people for the first time,
And as the current polling reflects, they don’t like this Emperor without clothes.
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Comments
Obama came to burn down the Republic as it was founded.
It had already been sadly and badly corrupted by the Progressives, but it still stood…much diminished.
Barracula was to finish it off, forming a Collectivist nation in its stead.
What he has done is create the forces that will bring up a Phoenix.
“It had already been sadly and badly corrupted by the Progressives, but it still stood…much diminished.”
I think many Republicans are to blame too for they have enabled the lib/progs.
The history of Progressivism has a BUNCH of Republicans in very prominent places.
Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon are two, but there are LOTS of others.
Remember, an R does imply someone is a conservative. It never has. One has to look under the hood, as we’ve found to our disgust.
Teddy has been called a “Progressive” – hard to avoid, since he ran as a Presidential candidate of the Progressive Party after his falling-out with the Republican candidate, his old buddy Bill Taft.
But this has people confused. Woodrow Wilson, that upstart Democrat who actually got into office instead of either TR or Taft, is also remembered as a “Progressive”. But the progressivism of TR and WW couldn’t be more different. The only similarity is that both both were big on excersizing novel and expanded (for the time) Presidential powers.
TR used his powers to, among other things, break up the large “trusts”. These were anti-competitive collaborations among the major industrial players of the era, mainly steel and railroads. Breaking them up allowed fundamental and traditional (not to mention successful) American methods – such as business competition – to function. So Teddy used his Presidential powers to get over-organized business out of the way, and let real business function.
WW used his powers to make government the major anti-competitive force in America. Why bother thwarting Big Business and its attempts to fix prices when government can simply control prices by fiat? Wilson, an intelligent man but a notorious megalomaniac, really thought that he was on a mission from God to reshape the US and, after WW1, the world – this despite his failure to reshape Mexico through his attempt to “force them to elect good men”. Americans were actually imprisoned for violating Wilson’s price controls, the most notorious case being a man who didn’t charge enough for pressing suits. Meanwhile, France and Britain were reluctant to go along with Wilson’s grandiose plans to remake Europe; they had some parochial idea that the war was about treaties and Germany’s attack on France and neutral Belgium, rather than about Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”. Clemenceau’s putdown of Woodrow – that he’d never known anyone to talk so much like Jesus Christ but act like Lloyd George – was dead on. Fortunately for us, the America of the “Roaring 20s” wanted nothing to do with Wilson’s straitjacket totalitarianism, and the only direct survivor of Wilsonianism is the permanent personal income tax. (Of course this is much more serious than it first appears, as it’s the only real excuse the feds have to keep track of the activities of everyone in America. If it was just about revenue it would be expensive but not nascently totalitarian.)
In short, TR and WW were both Progressives in their attempts to use the powers of the Presidency – whether traditional and constitutional, or new and contrived – to advance their agendas. But TR’s agenda was what we would now call “conservative”, whereas WW’s agenda was much more like Mussolini’s – ie, what the world now knows as socialist (Fascism, named for Mussolini’s party, being basically just a form of socialism with a nationalist spin, in opposition to the internationalist spin of the Bolsheviks).
Obama is pretty clearly following the footsteps of Wislon and Mussolini, an entirely different path from TR’s. The blanket “Progressive” label is seriously misleading.
“TR’s agenda was what we would now call “’conservative’”…
I think you are grossly mistaken in most of what you wrote.
I won’t take the time to expand on that, but TR was NOT a friend of entrepreneurial business, and “trusts” were substantially the product of myth-making.
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil “trust” had steadily brought down the retail price of petroleum products, including gasoline, which rose again after it was “busted.”
The “trusts” were never what the Progressives (including TR) portrayed, much as “Big Business” and “Big Oil” are nothing like what they claim in modern times.
rantbot is missing key information, but I, for one, appreciate the attempt.
Hello, President Palin!
She is the only person in the GOP with the history of reform and willingness to fight out there. Scott Walker would do well as VP, if he stays the course. Otherwise, Allen West cuz he’s got the balls to rid us of the troublesome Muslims.
i don’t get it. i always new who he was. ie “joe the plumber”.
The Sleeping giant ha awoken. Republicans will take back the Senste in 2014; Obama will be removed from office early 2015.
It would take 67 votes in the Senate to remove Obama.
Sorry, but as sweet as it sounds, it isn’t possible.
But we can ensure he leaves office as reviled as Carter, and begin the long task of erasing the myths the media has sold about him.
Actually, it is not impossible for the Republican to get to 67 or more Senate seats after the 2014 mid-terms. However, it is highly improbable, because not only would they have to hold every Senate seat currently held by a Republican, they would have to sweep a very high count of Democrat seats outside of the “swing state” seats. But if it happened, there would be an accompanying wave in the House of Representatives, as well as down-ticker races at the state level. It would mean, with or without Obama as President, that Congress would, could and should pass legislation in veto proof numbers.
If we get 67 seats and they are all willing to vote to convict and remove Obama, it’s a different case.
But remember, there are no special elections for President. We’d just get Joe Biden. While he couldn’t be as bad as Obama, he wouldn’t be all that much better, either.
And the Democrats would use our “attack on the Black President” against us to recoup their losses in Congress.
If we get to 67 votes in the Senate and an increased House majority, there are plenty of productive things we could do with them besides an impeachment effort.
If this were to happen Congress could tell Obama to stay on the golf course and the GOP would run the nation. While they were at it they could remove Kagan and the wise Latina from the bench and tell Prezbo don’t bother nominating any replacements.
Although I implied it, I agree impeaching and removing Obama under such a scenario would add fuel to the Democrats’ propaganda effort to further their message that the Republican party are racists in the minds of black Americans.
Conservative Beaner is correct. Better to leave Obama in the White House, as a village idiot, so rodeo clowns can keep on making fun of him. Impeaching and removing Obama gives Democrats the advantage of incumbency in the 2016 election.
I remember how it felt to live in this country at the end of the Jimmy Carter administration. This is very similar.
I never felt Carter hated America.
I never felt his policies were designed to weaken and undermine America.
I felt he was just wrongheaded.
Same sense here. While Carter was merely an inept dreamer, Obama bundles ineptitude with a radical hatred of American values.
A radical hatred of WESTERN values of which American values are the epitome.
I feel the same way about Carter. Obama hates this country and everything we stand for.
Carter did, however, come to hate rabbits.
Not even remotely the same. The airlines were deregulated under Carter as well as removing the prohibition on home wine and beer making. Both acts opened the door for future entrepreneurs.
They are trying to stop the pacific legal lawsuit.
Aw yes, however, the real truth might never be fully known since Obama has successfully hidden, behind the veil of his compliant media, Obama’s loyal press, his true plans for radically transforming our country.
Still, his immense bureaucratic edifice can be destroyed in a single Congress under American leadership, presuming that remains possible after these days of Obamamania!
Agree. Obama is now routinely have closed door access to outside media, closing out all but selective reporters. The need to control the message and re-frame it. Where Nixon was paranoid with a few around him who he controlled, it is Obama who has an entire staff and party selfies who are providing cover. MSM is wising up, but still want to CYA themselves for the water they already have carried leading the way for this administration to turn the corner away from the constitution. Why Andrew Brietbart was on the mark. It is going to be sites like this, with activist followers who need to shake up Americans and counter the left. Get involved now for 2014.
It was obvious before he took office that this would end badly, in the Nixonian sense. The difference is that Nixon left, and Barry will not. If the needed steps are taken, it will set back race relations decades, but if it isn’t there is a good chance the damage will not be recoverable. Some choices!
When you can say nothing negative against a policy of Obama’s without being called a racist and have this dogma promulgated by Democrats, received and accepted as unshakably true, there is no need to worry about what the other races think. You already know. You already see the proliferation of knock out “games” by black youth. You already see everyone in the black community that you may have thought to be cool coming out and declaring you a racist because you are saying their emperor has no clothes.
So, just man up and do what you gotta do. At some point, people will wise up and divorce their self-respect and identity from the color of the president’s skin. Germans had to deal with the ravages of life after Hitler, and they survived. The Democrats, Obama voters, and assorted LINFO’s of all races and stripes will, too.
The issue is NOT that Americans don’t like what they see. The issue is what will Americans do about it in November 2014? Can America remember the betrayal and stay incensed for one year before moving on to the next distraction?
The PR necessary to keep the fires stoked for one year will require lots of strategery…No worries, the GOP will be up to the task! /sarc/ They don’t call them the Party of Stupid for nothing.
If the GOP doesn’t learn street fighting, it’s all for naught. Sen. Cruz has a clue.
Fight! #WAR
Just think of the O-care suits coming. The ones about how Obama has illegaly changed his own law on the fly over and over, via regulation and rule making, that fly in the face of the written law.
He needs judges to support him in that.
Now he will have them.
Exactly. It’s all about building the monolithic super-legislature — the Courts.
It’s one thing to notice the temper tantrum thrown by the petulant child.
It’s another to realize the petulant child runs the household.
Don’t think retribution will be targeted towards political foes. He reads the polls, and sees the general public have turned against him.
The ruthless punishments to those that bruised his ego are still in their infancy.
Actions we view as “unimaginable” are being imagined as we speak…in the West Wing of the White House.
It wasn’t long ago that he set out to punish the general public for Republican legislators’ demand to have a say in the budgeting process. Victims included children who wanted to participate in a sand-castle contest in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, the regime is also unsympathetic to the pain of its own supporters who are being harmed by the health-care takeover (some of whom, naively, are still saying they hope, nevertheless, that the whole system can be made to work).
Barry’s wrath may be narrowly targeted when that’s feasible and effective, but indiscriminate attacks on the American people are also part of his arsenal.
I’m not getting the big advantage of this trade-off — Obama destroys the nation but we get to see who he really is. Some of us knew who he was five years ago. He was always naked. This is what we have to endure to learn such basic lessons?
In any case, this is entirely about packing courts in anticipation of the coming rout of democrats in 2014. They’re securing the judiciary, to throw off the balance of power in the long-term battle of social policy and cultural influence. In the end, the democrats probably think it’s more important to control the courts than the Congress. And they will.
There was also a rout in the 2010 midterms. What happened exactly, from all that? Can anybody remember? The democrats survived it, even pretty much contined to get what they wanted. The republicans did next to nothing with the historic mandate from the Tea Party, indeed, spit on it fairly quickly.
So we’ll have another rout. Will this one prove any different? Hard to believe it will. As long as the GOPe remains, nothing much will change.
By the way, Reid’s nuclear option is screaming testimony to the pathetic inadequacy of Mitch McConnell. Reid never would have tried it if he’d felt any real threat of retaliation or if he respected GOP leadership. McConnell’s big show of outrage was proof positive that he was rolled good and hard.
There are plenty of tactics left to Senate Republicans to slow down the process of confirming those three leftist shills to the DC Circuit, which is what this is really all about.
No unanimous consent for anything, including lunch breaks and adjournment. If the Democrats think it’s over, they have a big surprise coming.
History’s view of him. JFK, that colossal screwup disguised as a president, is revered for the Bay of Pigs. You don’t hear that he caused the crisis, that he left people to die. You hear that he forced the Soviets to back down. Kennedy’s the man for them!
So, we’ve got to correct, from now, before the history’s written, and a lot of it already has been, how Obama will be viewed by future generations. He must be seen as a racist, anti-American, anti-Judaeo-Christian, divisive, corrupt, Communist tyrant.
Democrats may turn against Obama and perhaps many others, but they will not turn against The Party. They will still vote for the candidate with a D behind their name. The fact Hillary has accomplished nothing means zilch to them. She is a Democrat and that is all that matters.
As someone noted in the previous thread, these are lifetime appointments that the Democrats are trying to nail down while the nailing is good.
I’m sure they understand that their overreaching makes them vulnerable.
IMO they’re betting that a GOP, divided between a corrupt Establishment and a crazy Tea Party, will not be able to exploit the vulnerability.
The judges the Democrats will ram through will be there through multiple turns of the political cycle.
They also run the risk of the courts being stormed & them guillotined.
It has happened before . That is equally the message of the French lady with the torch. It was not just a gift.
The trumbrils are sounding.
I don’t believe Americans have the stomach for forcing the issue.
I would suggest not betting the farm on Americans not having the stomach for forcing the issue.
Republican and conservative organizations need to have the “good of the his/her party versus the good of the country” ads ready to run in those red states with Democrat Senators. In the past these Senators could tell the party whip they would support a controversial nominee knowing that person would never be confirmed because of a Republican filibusters. Now they might be the deciding vote and it will come back to haunt them come reelection.
The NRA could have a field day with this. So will the anti-abortion groups. Expect the Chambers of Commerce to pipe on nominees who seem predisposed to approve all types of environmental and other regulatory overreach. It could make ever single judicial confirmation a scored vote on some advocacy group’s Senate Scorecard.
The true face of Obama???? Really? Lots are late for that party. What is becoming evident now is not more of what Obama is. We are seeing what the rest of gov is and has been for way too long. How all the players have been colluding to drain our wallets and to line their own pockets while the country goes to pot.
It’s TIME for the “Several States” to come together and Repeal the 17th Amendment. If restored to states’ control, the Senate would no longer function as a less-accountable, partisan version of the House, always playing to the Headcount!
The Founders were right.
Obama’s philosophy: When all else fails, cheat. Maybe it’s time for all us “ordinary” citizens to get together and have an armed march to Washington.
“But, but, but…
Bearing arms in Washington, D.C. is illegal! That’d be cheating!
…
…
Oooooohhhh!”
😉
Citizens would be fired on by the Park police. DHS has been stockpiling arms and ammunition; the police across the country have been militarized for just this reason: there will be no anti-Obama revolution.
Let the trumbrils roll!
Tumbrels. Or tumbrils. Not “trumbrils”. 🙂
With respect to Dana Milbank’s accusation that the Republicans have abused the filibuster, or other comments that they used it more aggressively than the Democrats, I’d like to note than in the 96-year history of the filibuster – covering 49 biennium Congressional sessions – Democrats have held the Senate majority in 30, unless I miss my count (source).
I acknowledging that I don’t have lists of legislation that note whether the minority party attempted a filibuster, how long it went, and whether it was successful. However, because Republicans were the minority party in a “filibuster-proof” majority of the filibuster’s life-cycle, it seems natural – even expected – that they’d have used it more than Democrats.
Therefore, until/unless more evidence is presented, I’m calling the “Republicans abused the filibuster” assertion inaccurate and meaningless.
Good observation.
What scares me is the thought that the Democrat machine already has pieces in place to literally steal the 2014 in enough elections that they will maintain their majority in the Senate.
If Republicans are not able to keep the House AND take the Senate back in 2014, there is no telling what kind of damage can be done – and once done, it may never get undone.
Theoretically, Republicans could use this tool to reverse legislation through the Senate – like Obamacare – and then pass a rule which implicitly (rather than a “gentleman’s agreement”) lays out the rules for filibusters such that the minority powers remain intact in future classes of the Senate.
Leaving this time-bomb laying around for any party to use whenever they choose is a Pandora’s Box which really needs to be locked back forever.
There is a reason our Founding Fathers put those protections in – as Benjamin Franklin said, “A Republic, if you can keep it….”
You’re barking up the right tree.
Republicans are trying to win the next election.
Democrats…..are trying to win the Last election.
The short-sighted – and admittedly somewhat vindictive – side of me wanted to say that now that there’s effectively no filibuster and the Senate rules can be changed by a simple majority, if the GOP gets the Senate, the rules should be changed to not only have a filibuster, but to require a 3/4 or 4/5 majority (75 or 80 votes, respectively) to break it. This rule would apply only to judicial and executive nominations, new legislation, and changing the Senate rules; repealing old legislation would require the simple majority.
As I said, short-sighted. I have no idea what the long-term effects of this rule change would be. I claim to only be “somewhat” vindictive in that I expect all parties in the Senate to play by the same rules. The Democrats loved the filibuster and fought its abolition tooth-and-nail when Republicans held the Senate, and now they hate it because the Republicans know how to use it. The “vice versa” of that sentence is also true. We’re nearly to the point that we need a referee on the Senate floor to enforce the rules and call fouls, and I for one am getting really tired of all this flip-flopping based on who’s in power. They need to grow up; stop acting like little children and show some consistency.
Bottom line: “Senator” is supposed to be a position and title that carries with it an air of responsibility, respect, and dignity. I expect them to start acting like it!
No Senate rule can bind future Senates from changing it. So it is pointless to reinstate the filibuster when we have the majority as it would be tactic being used against us then.
The only way to make the filibuster permanent is through a Constitutional Amendment, which is not a practical possibility.
In fact, the real problem isn’t so much the filibuster rule or whether it is 67 or 60 or 51 votes to cut off debate. It’s the 17th Amendment, which subverted the entire purpose of the Senate to represent their respective States’ interests. The House was designed as the “People’s House,” the Senate was to be appointed by state legislatures to represent the States in Congress.
Better to repeal the 17th Amendment. Then we would not have to worry about filibusters.
Tired, I am, that some still view every action/event as to how it affects “the party”. It’s no different than the MSM’s inability to report a traffic accident without the perspective of how it may affect Obama.
Right vs. wrong does not reside in the collective.