Friday, February 12, 2010

What's sad is, these days he IS an intellectual in the GOP.

You want to know how bankrupt the Republican argument is about evading a Senate filibuster to pass health care reform?

They brought out Dan Quayle to oppose budget reconciliation as a tactic for passing it.

"They're gonna go to budget reconciliation, which I believe would set a very bad precedent, because essentially -- if they could do it, and I don't know if they can do it, but if they could do it -- what you have done, effectively, is to take away the filibuster in the United States Senate," Quayle said. "So, therefore, you have 51 votes in the House and 51 votes in the Senate. That is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind. That is not the constitutional process."


... oh, WHERE to begin with this? The fact that there are more than 51 votes in a House majority, the fact that the Constitution says nothing about a supermajority for the Senate to pass most bills, the fact that the Senate was originally appointed by state legislatures instead of by popular election and therefore we don't have anything like the Senate the Founders originally intended, or the simple fact that the Senate filibuster was not even invented as such until 1837, and the modern form not created until 1917...

... nah. How about I begin, and end, with the fact that the best expert on the Constitution they could find is Dan "Potatoe" Quayle?

Thanks for playing, FOX News and the Republican Party. I'm sure there's some wonderful parting gifts waiting for you just behind the curtain somewhere...

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