Harry Reid corrected Sen Ted Cruz this morning, noting that what he’s engaged in is “not a filibuster.” Immediately on Twitter, our socialist friend Tawny Fawn parroted that remark.
And yet, as Charles Cooke points out at NRO:
Is it a filibuster or not? Apparently this depends on who is speaking. In 2010, socialist senator Bernie Sanders performed precisely the same trick that Ted Cruz has over the past twenty-plus hours: He asked for permission to make a long speech that doesn’t actually “delay or block” a piece of legislation. Back then, though, Sanders was a filibustering hero. Buzzfeed reported rather breathlessly that:
Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is being a badass today and doing a real filibuster of the Obama tax cuts to counteract the bullshit fake filibusters everyone else has been trying to pull recently.
Actually, “badass” Sanders was doing a fake filibuster. This, of course, is fine. But we should expect some consistency. That is to say that if Sanders’s filibuster was “real,” then so is Cruz’s; if it was a “bullshit fake” filibuster, then so is Cruz’s. Buzzfeed, however, has other ideas today:
Sen. Ted Cruz has now held the Senate floor for 19 hours in a faux filibuster. pic.twitter.com/GgspEe4nTs
This is a distinction that Talking Points Memo also saw fit to observe. In 2010, the site reported that Sanders was engaging in a ”a filibuster as filibusters were originally intended.” Ted Cruz, on the other hand . . .
In short, his “filibuster” is not actually a filibuster. It’s merely a speech to kill time.
Just like Sanders’s, then. Same, but different. On average, as Conn Carroll points out in the Washington Examiner, the headlines when Sanders spoke for 9 hours all contained the word “filibuster,” without mitigation:
The Huffington Post: Bernie Sanders Filibuster: Senator Stalls Tax Cut Deal
CBS News: Bernie Sanders Holds Old-School Filibuster Against Obama-GOP Tax Cut Deal
The Los Angeles Times: Sen. Bernie Sanders ends filibusterNPR: Sen. Bernie Sanders ‘Filibusters’ Tax Cut Deal
Salon: Bernie Sanders’ epic tax cut filibuster rant
C-SPAN: Sen. Sanders Held a Tax Cut Filibuster
Talking Points Memo: Sanders Ends Daylong Filibuster Of Tax Cut Compromise
Cruz’s headlines, unsurprisingly have not.
The left has such cover from the progressive mainstream media — hell, it’s more than that: the media is complicit in what is an ongoing cultural and political coup — that they no longer even concern themselves with having even to appear consistent.
They simply don’t care about us, because they don’t have to.
Their disdain is everywhere obvious. We the people don’t matter. The agenda is to fundamentally transform America — and the Democrats care only about that goal.
Harry Reid just announced that Cruz’s action were a big waste of time.
And now a nice long speech about “getting things done.”
Ga. My lunch is coming up.
They have fewer and fewer readers and viewers each year. They’re being propped up by billionaires as propaganda organs, spending tens of millions of dollars each quarter, as our would-be overlords work feverishly to complete the Fundamental Transformation while they still have some viewers and disposable cash.
I’m hopeful (today, anyway) that enough of my neighbors can smell the bullshit and see through the lies. We have some small advantage, in that it doesn’t matter so much if the LIVs and entitlements sponges get on board — once a critical mass of producers decides they’ll no longer slave away for a bunch of people they don’t know and don’t like, the bottom drops out.
Yeah, it’s kinda weird when your silver lining means the destruction of the news networks, and with them the economy. You take what you can get, right?
If the need for a genuine political party, as opposed to the ersatz GOP — representative of the very large swath of Americans currently unrepresented in Washington — hasn’t, by this time been discovered by those unrepresented, we can only wonder what is lacking: what phenomena are necessary to reveal the lack? Enough.
Every minute Cruz speaks is a minute Reid doesn’t have in which to strip out the Obamacare defunding provision in some sneaky way that lets the vulnerable Dems seeking re-election off the hook.
I expect the lies from the Democrats, but this filibuster is flushing out the freaks on the GOP side too.
– Based on the things that McCain just stated on the Floor he has gone completely senile.
– McCain does not make the rules and I don’t personally give a flying fuck if he feels ashamed for his turn-coat views and tries to cover his embarrassment by miscasting what Sen. Cruz said. Fuck him and the Arizona horse he rode in on. He had better just hope his saggy old ass never crosses my path or it will be an ugly slow motion battle between to 75 year olds.
– Man how I hate that bastard now. He was a 24 carat fuckup when he was in the military and hes a 24 carat fuckup even more-so now.
Jeff, today they see 3 fingers. Tomorrow, they’ll see 5.
And we have *always* been at war with Eastasia.
On the contrary, they loathe us. I’m ready to reciprocate.
[…] Jeff Goldstein discusses in part what I was talking about earlier […]
– Cruz is on Rush this morning exposing the whole circus, and in particular the GOP head fakes that are designed to maintain the status quo and give them all bs cover to take home to their constituents and claim there was nothing they could do. Bastards.
– We need to build a list for 2014.
I said (somewhere) yesterday that this was Cruz’ intention: to smoke out the RINOs and to capture the ‘Rats on camera as they tried to play gotcha! with him. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of the ACA being unfunded right now. This does serve the purpose of highlighting the deficiencies in congress and gives us the room to correct them in 2014.
Rock on, Ted!
After reading about McCain’s remarks, I am revolted and ashamed I voted for that POS. Come on, Arizona, vote that old coot out.
As it is not a filibuster when a Tea Party conservative speaks there is no War when a Dem socialist is POTUS. Only Dems can filibuster and only Republicans can wage war. It is all starting to make sense to me now.
Jeff, you’re behind the curve. Ace is already running back to the middle, comparing Cruz to Mussolini and his admirers to brownshirts. Get with the program, boy!
Ace is already getting his capo on? I’m not the least surprised.
I was. Primaries ain’t even started yet.
McConnell, Cornyn, McCain and the rest of the surrender Republicans prefer the fascist Democrats they know to the decent American people they don’t. It’s that simple.
The Mensheviks always declare the winner before the process starts. That’s how we got McCain and Romney.
It didn’t work for Cruz.
“Jeff, you’re behind the curve. Ace is already running back to the middle, comparing Cruz to Mussolini and his admirers to brownshirts. Get with the program, boy! ”
Sorry Ace. You will gather fewer and fewer sticks for your fasces each time. And your lictor Gabe will get soft triceps over time as his burden lightens.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!
You didn’t build those four lights! Eat your peas!
Giving a shit what Ace thinks on any topic at hand is rather like caring what flitter-flutters through Megan McCain’s cavernous skull, isn’t it?
Pretty much. I haven’t been over there since he decided he was too good for the likes of us.
#Outlaw
Texas. It’s like a whole other country.
Rock on, Ted!
I agree.
Look, this is a long game with multiple front.
Anyone in the know understands that this latest effort simply cannot undo Obamacare.
But to those that don’t know, or don’t care to know all they’ll remember is that some people tried to undo this catastrophe.
Likewise those who recognize the need to overturn the apple cart that is the DC insider/statist axis also need to understand that what Cruz is doing is forcing people in the Republican party to publicly declare a position.
You don’t get anywhere in a Bridge match by passing.
“Texas. It’s like a whole other country.”
It’s a regular Constantinople. It’s only one “turkish delight on a moonlit night” away from being something else .
I think we can take it as certain that the Republican pole of the DC insider/statist axis understand Cruz to be doing exactly that.
Sultan Obama’s problem is a big chunk of his Janissaries come from Texas and other, Texas-sympathizing states.
You don’t get anywhere in a Bridge match by passing.
That’s right, Thomas. It’s astonishing to me that so many of the talking heads, some that I used to have some respect for, have been all but showing Cruz the backs of their hands. How can Brit Hume have spent a million years in broadcasting and not see that Cruz is playing the long game? How can Krauthammer, who likes to think himself a sooperjeenus. have no insight into what Cruz is doing? I don’t claim to be a sooperjeenus, just observant and a little smarter than the average bear, but holy cow. This tactic is simple and it’s also going to take time.
Ocare is going to go up like a mushroom cloud all on its own. There is no way the technogeeks that are working on the software for the interfaces are going to get this thing up and running.* They’ll get one too many ridiculous “one more thing . . .” requests and hit the door rather than waste any more time on an endless unsolvable problem child.
* because they are being asked to do the impossible, not because they don’t have a simpler solution that doesn’t involve getting a committee of luddites involved.
In short, his “filibuster” is not actually a filibuster. It’s merely a speech to kill time.
….which is what a filibuster does.
The answer to your question is that Hume, Krauthammer, et. al. are playing a different long game; the one where we lose more slowly because they see that as the only alternative to losing now. From their Kobayashi Maru p.o.v., what Cruz is doing is hastening the inevitable.
Why do you think the Sultan’s viziers and pashas put so much time and effort into teaching the Janissaries about the lurking infidel threat in the Souq?
[…] “The Real Fake Filibuster” | protein wisdom […]
” From their Kobayashi Maru p.o.v., what Cruz is doing is hastening the inevitable.”
A whole lot of that, and perhaps a bit of fear of the unknown. These people have comfy cushy jobs under the current status quo. Upsetting the apple cart has the potential change many things.
They don’t want to find heir positions have become the status quo ante.
What Ernst and Thomas D said about Krauthammer, et. al..
As much as I despise Teddy Roosevelt, he did prophetically describe Kobayashi Maru pundits very well in his reflections on men like Ted Cruz [emphasis mine]:
*sigh*
That was what I feared, fellas.
We’re on our own, it appears.
Leigh: As Chesty Puller said: ‘We’re surrounded; that simplifies the problem’.
We’re on our own, it appears
Not intending a criticism of the sentiment, but this was always the case.
It is the meaning of political independence, or to put it another way, of popular sovereignty in America. To the extent that this state of affairs has never been learned in the contemporary population or has been largely forgotten by those who did happen to learn it once, way back when, the intention of the American founding and framing of government has been abandoned.
The idea was, the only source of power in American government arose from the people — the people had to first claim to possess the power of governing themselves in order to surrender to their government such power as is necessary for that government to do what the American people will it to do.
The effort to teach and to learn, or in some cases re-learn this teaching is underway. Hence: make D.C. listen.