Charles Krauthammer Provided Us with an Excellent Example of Nonsensical Republican Party Thinking — that Perfectly Illustrates the Barf-Inducing Hypocrisy of the Allegedly Conservative Right

© 2013 Peter Free

 

29 November 2013

 

 

“Let me ignore the plank in my own eye to castigate you for the speck in yours”

 

When someone as bright as Charles Krauthammer goes off Logic’s rails, you know something is poisoning the water that Republicans drink:

 

 

To get three judges onto a coveted circuit court, frustrated Democrats abolished the filibuster for executive appointments and (non-Supreme Court) judicial nominations.

 

The problem is not the change itself. It’s fine that a president staffing his administration should need 51 votes rather than 60. Doing so for judicial appointments, which are for life, is a bit dicier. Nonetheless, for about 200 years the filibuster was nearly unknown in blocking judicial nominees. So we are really just returning to an earlier norm.

 

The violence to political norms here consisted in how that change was executed. By brute force — a near party-line vote of 52 to 48 . This was a disgraceful violation of more than two centuries of precedent. If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today are whatever the majority decides they are that morning.

 

© 2013 Charles Krauthammer, An outbreak of lawlessness, Washington Post (28 November 2013)

  

Oh?

 

According to the esteemed Mr. Krauthammer, Democrats are supposed to self-discipline themselves enough to do what was good for the Senatorial institution, despite the fact that Republicans have been flagrantly misusing the filibuster rule to shut government completely down for the entirety of President Obama’s terms (so far).

 

 

The moral? — These bomb-throwing whiners bawl, when their own lack of respect for American governmental institutions earns them a kick in the behind

 

My point is that when one of our two political parties decides not to respect itself, or America, enough to get the job of Congressional sausage-making done, all heck breaks loose and hypocritically ignoring the childish wrong-doing on one’s own side merely exacerbates America’s decline.

 

If the Senate’s rules mean so much to your folks, Chuck, why not attempt to persuade them that engaging in blanket obstructionism, for its own sake, is not a viable route to sound government or Congressional service.  Pull your head out of your cloven bottom.