Frum: McCain's a goner. Save our Senators!

The problem with "saving the Senate" is look at who you are going to save. Saxby Chambliss, Mitch McConnell, Liddy Dole and maybe Norm Coleman. McConnell is part of the Washington problem and Chambliss and Dole are impotent. Coleman may be worth saving, but the truth is none of them are exactly shining lights of conservatism. They are--except for Coleman--the problem with the GOP.

It looks like Coleman and Dole are goners, with McConnell looking bad. If Obama does well and brings out African Americans in Georgia, Chambliss is also a goner. At some point, does 57 versus 59 or 60 really matter? The Dems will always be able to pick up Snowe, Collins, and Specter to get a fillibuster-proof 60 on important issues. Even Voinovich will abandon the party on economic and social issues.

Frum's a twit.

From: Here
To: Eternity

I tend to agree with Daniel. I'm not sure that holding 45 or so Senate seats that Frum suggests would matter much. It's not like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, etc... are reliable conservative votes in any case. They are just as likely to jump onto the Obama bandwagon in important matters.

Plus, even if the Republicans hold 45 seats or so, it would also require actual, effective, conservative leadership in the Senate. Is there anyone that we can point to that could fill that role? It certainly isn't coming from Elizabeth Dole et al. What sort of reform and leadership can we expect from the Republicans in the Senate that would actually lead to any sort of revival? That whole bunch is just a part of the problem.

I question whether the Democrats are going to be a consistently unified force when it comes to passing actual legislation. No doubt Obama will get what he wants in many respects. But people forget that there are a lot of conservative Democrats now, who will not tow the party line if it goes too far to the left.

Nightstalker
October 26, 2008 1:14 AM
If the voters cannot challenge the Constitutional eligibility of a federal candidate for office, then we are indeed slaves to Congress - at least in the opinion of Surrick. This is indeed truly dangerous ground.

What is dangerous about it? This goes along with the 'America is a Republic, not a Democracy' argument that we often hear from the Right Wing.

Americans don't decide political questions, we elect representatives - our Congressional Members - to decide political questions on our behalf.

Even Voinovich will abandon the party on economic and social issues.

Interestingly, Voinovich is clearly starting to show signs of senile dementia. It may not be long, as in a matter of months, before Strickland is naming his replacement.

For that matter, with a filibuster-proof supermajority close, it pays to start doing the morbid job of keeping a Senate death watch. So, which elderly senators are likely to affect the composition of the higher chamber by dropping dead in the next couple of years?

Bottom line: Akaka and Inouye, both Democrats of Hawaii. Both are 84 years old; both seem in robust good health at the moment but, well, 84 years old. And Hawaii has a Republican governor, and will until at least January 2011. Byrd (D-WV, 90 years old), Stevens (R-AL, 84) and Lautenberg (D-NJ, 84) all come from states with governors of their same party.

In order, the next good bets are:

1) Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican in a state with a Democrat governor
2) Jim Bunning of Kentucky (76, Republican with a Democrat governor)
3) Dianne Feinstein of California (75, Democrat with a Republican governor)

So now they're talking about oversight and accountability. They should have been doing that all along with the Bush administration and maybe people would trust them now.

The problem, as I see it, is that the Congress has become spineless, and there there is 100% correlation with having a conservative president and increasing national debt. I would prefer the risk of 2 years of unified government vs, another Republican as president.

Steve

John E

What nonsense!

I cannot believe you, or any rational person, would support the notion that CONGRESS gets to decide who can challenge the eligibility of a candidate for office.

I guess this just shows that you can rally some people to an idea, no matter how astoundingly stupid it is.

Sorry for the duplicate. I didn't realize the cursor moved on me.

“Perception is everything” appears to be the organizing paradigm of modern political campaigns in the US. Technology and capital have combined into the perfect storm for managing perception. Perceptions thrust into the early years of technology kept the Republicans largely out of office for decades after FDR and the Great Depression. Republicans were portrayed as the elitist party of the rich. They were opposed to the plight of the average working guy. In the seventies with the economy worsening and gas lines growing long the Republicans saw the chance to grab the reins of perception. Instead of the perception of concern for the working man in a time of economic affluence the Republicans saw that the economic reality of a weakening economy was a perfect moment to launch their perception of tax and spend. The Democrats were not the party of the working man. They opposed the working man by spending frivolously and even selfishly. The Democrats were the true elitists. However, the underlying necessary condition that allowed this perception its oxygen was a changing economic reality. In a time of affluence, social programs are a plus in political marketing. When money is not a concern it is easy to spend, to create images of ourselves as holy, caring, giving. However, when economic needs start dominating the day to day experience of voters, the time is ripe for creating the perception that tax and spend liberals are to blame, leftist elitists bent on nothing other than benefiting themselves at the cost of the common Joe. The Republicans seized the perceptional opportunity with Ronald Reagan and controlled the perceptions and dialogs for decades. They cloaked their conservative ideology in the modern garbs of egalitarianism and the working Joe’s fight against the liberal elite. Liberal, the “L” word was profane.

Now, the managed perception of Republican ideology has become fat and ripe for takeover. Economic realities have again given an occasion ripe for perception’s paradigm shift. The elite have now become the ones in power, the ones to blame, the party of the elite. The true Republican believers have fled into the concaves of their historical, conservative ideology and left the neo-cons to fend for themselves. The righteous indignation of the true conservatives is set to blast the folks that enabled their political domination. While Republicans were all too happy to get votes and cater to their perceptual electorate, they also discovered that managing perception came with a cost. It cost them their conservative soul. Now that they appear soulless, bereft of new ideas, bearing the burden of the image of fault and elitism they have retreated. Those that are the party faithful have hunkered down into their ideological roots to regroup and try to re-forge an image for another day, an opportunist day. Conservatives are looking at perhaps decades in the perceptual doldrums. The smart ones know it. The last desperate screams of the dying McCain campaign are shrill and are now working to dismantle the last bastions of their credibility. As many Joe’s are saying, “If a Republican’s lips are moving they are lying”.

What shows itself in this spectacle is that “perception is not everything”, perception is an opportunistic infection of economic reality. When reality happens the managers of perception lose. They are ripe for takeover. When “management” begins to believe its own propaganda it loses touch with the shifting sands of reality beneath their feet. However, necessity requires that “Joes” keep a healthy stand in underlying realties, that they do not take the manufactured perceptions too seriously and, when perceptions grow thin, the perceptual power brokers find they are touch with their own economic realities.

In the Senate, it takes, of course, a majority to pass a bill.

If the bill gets from the Senate to the President, he has the option to veto it.

In order to overturn a veto, THERE you need 60 votes. The 'supermajority'.

So, if you can pass the bill with 60 votes in the first place, the President is aware you already have the votes to overturn it if he decides to veto it.

So, it is often called a 'veto-proof majority'.

That is where the 60 senator thing comes from.

Karen,

According to Article I, Section 7, it takes a 2/3 supermajority of each house, or given the present size of the Senate, 67 votes in the Senate, to override a veto. So a veto-proof majority in the Senate would be 67 votes.

Daniel,

Thanks! My question, however, still stands: *Why* does it take 60 votes to stop a filibuster? Where is this rule found? Where does this number come from? Whose idea was this?

I guess I can understand why you would want to set a bar for defeating a filibuster that is greater than a mere 50%, which would mean that filibustering would never really work; but less than the 2/3 supermajority, which would be very difficult to attain. 60% is a number that, while greater than a mere majority, is theoretically attainable. But, in effect, the way this has worked out in practice, it means that it takes a 60-vote supermajority of the Senate to do anything, which means that the minority can routinely frustrate the majority. I don't this is what the Framers intended.

David,

I believe the "60 votes" dates from the 1970's, when the US Senate changed it's rules to allow cloture (an end to debate) on a 3/5th vote, rather than 2/3rds of the Senate (of all the Senators present).

Pretty much changed to bring an end to filibusters from Southern Senators over civil rights legislation. Without it, an even greater minority of senators can hold up the body, and government as we know it. Although sometimes, that may not be a bad thing...

The cloture rule itself dates back to the WWI era, when the Senate was debating various war related measures for months on end, holding up other bills, and accomplishing nothing. It took 2/3rds of the Senate to end debate according to the rule they adopted.

Interesting argument and advice from Frum. It looks like some of the embattled Senate candidates (e.g. Dole in NC) are already beginning to make the same argument about the need for divided government in the face of an Obama election.

Ah, yes. It's always time for a divided government when it looks like the Democrats will take the presidency.

Oddly enough this appears to be the only time it applies.