Word: republicanism
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...outcome in Massachusetts reflects a national stance on the healthcare debate in Washington, namely that 55 percent of Americans now feel that the current bill should be altered to garner more Republican support. Reworking the bill does not mean discarding it entirely. However, it is clear that the public wants to see an end to the fierce partisanship of the deliberation on Capitol Hill. Accordingly, the Democrats should honor the will of the people by opening up the legislation to Republican ideas to achieve a bill with the bipartisan support to ward off a Senate filibuster...
Besides their unworkable policies and their weak counterarguments, Democrats demonstrate arrogance with their flabby campaigning. “Republicans are culture warriors,” Democrats used to tell us, “who attack candidates’ personal lives to avoid discussing issues.” Yet Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, the Democrats’ failed gubernatorial candidate, aired television ads attacking his Republican opponent, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, on his graduate thesis. President Obama, when he campaigned in Massachusetts for the Democrats’ failed senatorial candidate, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, ridiculed Brown?...
...With the filibuster in effect, 60 votes or more is a majority. Forty votes or fewer is a minority. Anything in between is a gridlocked no man’s land where nothing of consequence can be passed. This situation’s proximate cause is the current Senate Republican Conference’s pernicious decision to use the filibuster at an unprecedented frequency...
This problem has increased markedly since the Republicans became the minority in the Senate in 2007. In the 109th Congress, from 2005 to 2007, motions to vote on cloture—the procedural manifestation of a filibuster—numbered 68. In the 110th Congress, from 2007 to 2009, that number more than doubled to 139. The current Congress is on pace to match that figure, with 67 cloture motions filed this year alone. The current Republican minority has chosen to filibuster anything and everything, subverting majority rule...
...this tactical decision by the Republicans has a deeper strategic purpose. Politically, there is no reason for the Republican minority to help the Democratic majority rack up policy accomplishments. If the Democrats pass major legislation, they can campaign on it in the midterm elections, preserving or even expanding their majority. This is especially true if Republicans sign on, which gives the legislation an attractive veneer of bipartisanship...