Playing hypocritical race card "voter suppression election reform" politics, President Biden and his Democratic Party are launching an attack on the Senate 60-vote supermajority filibuster rule which is all that stands between their party's full control of virtually all legislation over many future generations.
As discussed in my previous article, Democrats are now in a position to virtually eliminate America's two-party system, award statehood status to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to pack the Senate with two additionally reliable Democrat Senate members, pack the Supreme Court with as many new liberal justices as they choose, and cede all state voting procedures to massive expansion of centralized federal government authority.
And all of this will be determined before — and will shape the outcome of — the 2022 congressional elections, arguably the most consequential of our nation's history.
When asked at his March 25 press conference if he agreed with former President Barack Obama that the filibuster is a racist "relic of the Jim Crow era," Biden said that he did.
Not asked was why both he and Obama had championed very different positions in 2005, when the two of them, along with 22 other Democrat Senators, staged an unsuccessful filibuster attempt to block President George W. Bush's Supreme Court appointment of Justice Samuel Alito.
Then-Illinois Sen. Obama said at the time, "I will be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values."
Obama added, "When you look at his decisions — in particular, during times of war — we need a court that is independent and is going to provide some check on the executive branch."
Former Delaware Sen. Biden made an impassioned hour-long speech at the time which explained why the filibuster rule must be protected: "If there is one thing the country stands for, it's fair play — not tilting the playing field in favor of one side or the other, not changing the rules unilaterally. We play by the rules … That quintessentially American trait is abandoned in the 'nuclear option.'"
Biden added, "Republican citizens have benefited from the Senate's check on excesses of the majority."
But that was then — this is now.
In a July 2020 speech he gave at the funeral for civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., Obama said that if the filibuster needed to be eliminated in order to pass civil rights and voting rights legislation, then it should be.
"And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do," Obama said.
During his press conference, referring to a prospective Republican filibuster against the Democrat's so-called election reform bill, President Biden amped up the rhetoric to charge that "This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle."
Suggesting a compromise to eliminating the filibuster altogether, Biden said he strongly supports a return to a "talking filibuster" which requires senators to remain on the floor in objection to legislation, and he also signaled openness to additional steps.
Without mentioning any specifics, Biden warned that "If there's complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we'll have to go beyond what I'm talking about."
Pointing out that last year there were five times as many motions to break filibusters than the 58 motions applied between 1917 and 1971 when the filibuster first existed, President Biden claimed that the procedure's use is "being abused in a gigantic way."
During the last full session of Congress, there were 298 cloture votes.
Not mentioned during the press conference, those filibusters were used overwhelmingly by Democrats against Republicans during the Trump presidency.
And when Democrats used the filibuster in 2020 to block African-American Sen. Tim Scott's bipartisan Republican-authored police reform bill, none among them appeared to be concerned that this use was racist then.
Senate Democrats also had no problem using the filibuster to block the Republican-sponsored Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act meant to mandate that care be provided for babies that survive abortion attempts. Forty-one Democratic senators prevented the proposal to advance for a floor vote.
Senate Democrats also filibustered the Republican's $500 billion coronavirus relief bill in September after blocking Republicans on a procedural vote for a separate $1.6 trillion coronavirus relief package twice in March 2020. They blocked a vote on then-Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's $500 billion coronavirus relief bill in October as well.
According to Senate tallies, during Trump's presidency, McConnell and the Senate GOP have held time-sapping roll call votes to break a filibuster and end debate on nominees a whopping 314 times. By comparison, all previous presidents combined faced 244 roll call votes to advance nominees over a filibuster.
Now that Democrats are in power, their filibuster appetite has obviously soured dramatically. Now, it appears, the very notion is racist.
Mitch McConnell, still the GOP's chamber leader, has a very different take on the matter and has made it clear that he will grind the Senate to a halt if Democrats now change the filibuster rules.
Good for him … and good for us!
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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