If The President Wants It ... Filibuster! (No Matter What It Is)

“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey said.

There you have it, folks: an outright admission from a Republican senator that some of his colleagues are determined to vote against anything -- anything -- President Obama proposes. Hell, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee vowed to filibuster the bill before it had even been presented, when they didn't know what would be in it:

"On March 22, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz released an open letter to Reid promising to 'oppose the motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions.'”

Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) retorted that he always followed the principle of reading a bill before deciding it should be filibustered.

Click here for an article by Evan Brandt at Mainline Media News from May 1, 2013, entitled "Toomey doubts second Senate gun-control vote any time soon." It tells the story of the failure on April 17 of the Manchin-Toomey amendment; click here for a PolitiFact article explaining what the amendment contains. (Manchin is a Blue Dog Democrat, Toomey a Republican.) The full bill would have required background checks on ALL gun sales; the M-T amendment would cover only sales at gun shows and over the Internet, not private sales among friends or family members (still a fairly large loophole, in my opinion).

How could such a reasonable, moderate proposal fail, when virtually every poll showed the support of more than 80% of the American population? Gun owners, NRA members, Republicans -- all these groups favored the amendment by upwards of 70%, while -- unsrprisingly -- non-gun-owners and Democrats were upwards of 90% in favor.

Yet the amendment failed, getting 46 votes opposed -- every Republican senator, plus five Democrats. And in today's ridiculous political reality, the Republicans filibuster virtually every Democratic proposal, even when they have supported or urged passage of similar bills in the past, so 60 votes are required (the U.S. Senate being the only body among all the democratic nations in the world where a 50% + 1 vote is insufficient).

Click here for a Wikipedia article describing the Senate filibuster procedure.

Since the vote, polls show declines -- some quite drastic -- in the popularity of the five Democrats who opposed the bill; Toomey's position, on the other hand, has strengthened with his constituents. Manchin is optimistic that the bill will come to the floor again and pass; Toomey is skeptical.

Fear of retribution from the NRA (National Rifle Association) is believed to be the reason for the amendment's failure. (One of the NRA's semi-official mottoes: If God didn't make men equal, Samuel Colt did.) The NRA was formed in 1871 as an organization for the promotion of gun safety, marksmanship, and hunting. It was taken over by radical right-wing Second Amendment supporters in a coup at the 1977 national convention, and has been highly politicized ever since. It has evolved from an association of gun enthusiasts to a lobby for the gun manufacturers, and their answer to everything is to put more guns in everyone's hands -- in other words, to sell more guns.


I have a question about the current gun debate: If the bill comes to the Senate floor again, even if it manages to pass -- what will be its fate in the House, with its contingent of Tea Party lunatics? There's been tremendous fuss and fury surrounding the Senate debate -- but is it irrelevant?