Relying On Ignorance

Another example of Republicans relying on the weeklong attention span of the American electorate can be seen in this chart by McClatchy:



Far from being "the way the Senate does business," filibusters of this amount are COMPLETELY WITHOUT PRECEDENT in the last 45 years. Yet the press continues to report this as "The Congress just can't get anything done," without the historic context, and people get perturbed that those politicians in Washington can't get anything done, and so they hate the whole lot of them. This is a deliberate tactic from Republicans because they know it's their only way out of their political hole in 2008. Frank Luntz (via Digby) lays it out (I always like when a GOP operative asks the question "Can the GOP bounce back?" as if he has no vested interest in the outcome):

Still, a Republican victory is not impossible. Not yet. One promising indicator is the fact that Congress is at its lowest approval point in a generation - even lower than in 1994, when Republicans seized the majority in the House after 40 years of Democratic control.

The Democrats blew into Washington in 2006 as a breath of fresh air in response to Republican scandal, Republican budget mismanagement and a Republican war. But in recent weeks, that freshness has turned stale. Despite majorities in both houses, Congress is seen as having failed to set tough ethics standards, failed to stop wasteful spending and failed to fix illegal immigration.

And those failures offer a glimmer of hope for the GOP.

Anger and frustration toward politicians is even greater than it was in 1992, when Ross Perot won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote as a third-party candidate. Americans are fed up with Washington, with the noise and static, with the lack of common sense and with nothing ever getting done. If a Republican candidate empathizes with and embraces the fed-up nation, that's step one.

How much you wanna bet that Luntz came up with this idea to filibuster absolutely everything and obstruct the Congress from doing the nation's business?

You can see this in California too. Republicans in the State Senate is obstructing the passage of the budget, which isn't great but has been agreed to by all other parties. State Senate Republicans claim to have objections to the budget but REFUSE to spell them out. They have no interest in writing a responsible budget plan. They simply want to make government look bad because they think that bodes well for them.

You have the monster Reagan created when he called government the problem rather than the solution; a political party so wedded to their ideology that they would rather shut down the government than allow the other side a "victory," victory being broadly defined as the passage of any legislation affecting the lives of any citizens. This is the ultimate bad actor tunneling its way into the corridors of power. They worship power but detest the business that goes along with it; so they explain to their constituents that he who governs least governs best, and as if to prove it they try really hard not to govern at all, and damn the consequences.

Democrats highlighted this last week with the all-night Iraq debate. They need to keep going. This Custer's Last Stand by filibustering every piece of legislation needs to be exposed for what it is, a cheap political ploy. The Republicans ought to remember that Custer lost his battle.