Rush: The Senate Is Broken - Fix it now.

Rush Limbaugh Show ^ | April 14, 2005 | Rush Limbaugh

[Matchett-PI]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, we focused here on the House primarily today, but I'm going to tell you something else. It's time to reform the United States Senate as well, because the United States Senate, ladies and gentlemen, is broken.

The United States Senate has become a body incapable of conducting serious oversight and confirmation hearings.

It has become an institution controlled by a minority of leftists and Republican gadflies who serve the leftists' purposes, and while these senators play these games, and that's what they are: games, []they position themselves for television cameras.

They play to their special interest base like MoveOn.org; the nation is suffering as a result. The Senate does not take its responsibility to ensure our national security seriously. They were AWOL prior to 9/11, and today they pretend to care about security when in fact senators of both parties refuse to even strengthen our driver's licenses and other official documents used by the enemy to kill us, so bogged down in pettiness, so driven by the agenda of a small cabal of radicals and gadflies the nation's legitimate business cannot get done because it stalls in the United States Senate.

For months now, in the United States Senate, they've been debating whether they should change a Senate rule abused by this cabal of Democrat senators and gadfly Republicans to stop the unconstitutional use of filibusters to block the president's nominees to the federal bench.

This cabal of Democrats and gadfly Republicans, with support from these people in the media, actually want you to believe that to change the rule would be equivalent to destroying 200 years of tradition, the Constitution, and Senate comity, yet when in fact the opposite is true.

Never before has the Senate of the United States been so abused as it is being abused today by Dingy Harry Reid and the Democrats in this cabal of gadfly Republicans, and yet the Republican majority talks and talks and talks and we read today in The Hill newspaper that they're just now realizing they need to fight the propaganda efforts of their opponents.

I've got a story in The Hill that Republicans think all of a sudden they're losing the PR battle to Harry Reid. How long has this been going on? It's been going on for four years and they all of a sudden just now realize they've got a problem on the PR side?

Folks, the Senate of the United States is broken. It is controlled by the likes of Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and John McCain, and unless the Senate is reformed, it will continue to be little more than a stage for grandstanding and undermining the proper functioning of certain legitimate government functions like national security, border security, and the confirmation process.

In case your memory is short, you're wondering why I'm including national security in here, these people all see the intelligence reports that the president gets. The president gets a bit more detailed, but they acted like after 9/11 and all these other things that they had no idea.

The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They saw that intelligence and they voted for the resolution to authorize war based on it. After there were no weapons of mass destruction, every one of these Democrat senators that saw that intelligence nevertheless acted like they'd been lied to, like they had been fooled by President Bush, that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

They don't have the guts and the backbone to stand up for what they do or for what they should do and when they don't do what they should do they blame Bush for not telling them anything. So it's not just the Democrats in the House.

The Senate is at a standstill, and it's unfortunate but the Republican leadership apparently doesn't know what to do about it because in The Hill newspaper today they admit that they're losing the PR battle and they've got a problem here, and I have to tell you something, folks,

losing a PR battle to Harry read is like losing a PR battle to Daffy Duck.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

[]RUSH: All right, now, Republicans admit -- let me find this Hill story. I've put it at the top here. Yeah, here it is. Listen to this here. "GOP Fears It's Losing Frist vs. Reid." It's by Alexander Bolton, HillNews.com. "Senate Republican leaders were due to meet last night amid rising concern that they are being beaten on the 'nuclear option' by Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) public-relations war room.

The GOP’s talks follow a meeting last week in which aides warned Bob Stevenson, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) communications director, that something needs to be done to win back lost ground, a participant said. 'I think there’s a realization that this particular [Democratic] effort has to be countered and they’re in full-scale attack mode,' a GOP aide said, adding, 'I think that people know that we’ve got a serious problem here. There’s been a lot of talk. Advice has been solicited from me and others. I’ve been told that a plan will be submitted tonight. It will be tweaked.'" Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So do they just now realize they're in a fight? They've been in a fight for four years; they just now realize they're losing this PR effort?

I'm going to try to help out here.

I'm going to offer some strategery here, but my strategery goes beyond ending the filibuster of judges because at some point they're going to figure it's just pull the trigger on the option.

It's just get the senators in this room and tell them the facts of life and pull the trigger on the option, the constitutional option.

Now, what do you do after that, because the Democrats, if this happens, if the constitutional option is triggered and the rule is changed, the Democrats are going to go ballistic.

They're all going to be sputtering around out there like Barney Frank, and the Senate Democrats are going to be making charges of unconstitutional and all these things.

So what should the Senate Republicans do after -- if they do it -- after they change the Senate filibuster rule to exclude judges? This is what they should do because Harry Reid has promised to shut down the Senate, has he not? "We're just going to stop. We're going to shut down the Senate."

Fine.

Here's what the Republicans should do when Dingy Harry shuts down the Senate.

The Republicans in the Senate should propose one bill after another and make the Democrats either filibuster the bills or vote against them, and I'm talking about bills like this: Like issuing Social Security checks, like funding Medicare and Head Start, farm subsidies, education. No omnibus bills, no bills that are totally inclusive of all kinds of legislation. One specific bill after another.

If they're going to stop the Senate and shut it down, Republicans need to propose a bill that says, "Based on this the Senate is voting--" and put a bill up there, "we will suspend the issuance of all Social Security checks."

Just do it and let the Democrats either filibuster that or vote against it, and then do the same thing on Medicare checks, and Head Start, and farm subsidies and education.

I predict to you the Democrats will buckle so fast they'll beg for mercy, and if they don't they're going to get creamed at the polls.

There's any number of ways of dealing with this, but not if you're afraid.

Not if you're looking at things through fear.

END TRANSCRIPT Click here to access hot links below and throughout the transcript: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com

Read the Articles... (The Hill: GOP fears it's losing Frist v. Reid) (LA Times: In Nevada, Reid Is the Name to Know - 06.23.03)

Read Rush's Original Coverage... (Media Goes Nuts Over Martinez, DeLay; Ignores Rampant Harry Reid Corruption - 04.07.05)

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!

[CDB]

When you post a comment, your tagline is available for change down there below the comment area. If you post a reply to this message with nothing in it, I'll understand! On rare occasions, I have been known to post an empty comment to myself in order to change my tagline. One smart aleck posted back to me on one such occasion that he didn't believe a word of it, and was amazed that I would even post such a thing. LOL!

Thanks! I love those "smart-alecky" FReeper comments, too.

[JustaCowgirl]

You'd better have a darn good tagline, posting a comment like that.

[Deo et Patria]

This is so wrong, I don't know where to begin responding to this. Apparently, you don't follow congressional politics, if you're going to claim that the Democrats have made progress from 1980 to today.

[Mamie2010]

what does BTT!!! mean?

[Jim Noble]

if you're going to claim that the Democrats have made progress from 1980 to today.

Obviously their overall course has been downhill.

But they have been very successful in cleansing their 20 base states of Republican senators.

If they had not, there would be 65-70 Republicans in the Senate today. Instead, we allow RAT Senators to be re-elected without serious opposition from Montana and North Dakota-states where the President gets more than 60% of the vote.

This is as if the Democratic party in Massachusetts didn't run a candidate when Ted Kennedy retires.

It's disgraceful.

[llortami]

One of the beautiful things about the US constitution is its brevity. Adding an amendment with Sixteen! sections runs counter to this.
You could easily cut out 3/4ths of that amendment.

[Dave78]

What's Rush going to say if, five years from now, President Hillary Clinton is nominating Alan Dershowitz to the Supreme Court and the GOP only has 47 or so Senate seats? What will you say then, Rush? Will the dreaded filibuster suddenly come back into fashion?

[E.G.C.]

Bump to the Top. Every time a thread gets a post it's bumped to the top of latest posts.

[MeekOneGOP]

Here's an in your face pic for the Liberal
lyin' jerks trying to smear Delay!

[spokeshave]

Frist was carried back to his office in a canvas bag by the Sargent at Arms after suffering an involuntary Fristoplasty

[swampfox98]

I don't look for the Republicans to do any of this. But I can dream, can't I?

[Theodore R.]

I think he was saying that the Democrats have not won the "macro" war since 1980 but they manage to prevail by "micro" and "minority" means. It is they who know where to be when an issue comes up for a vote, and they are merciless, unlike the cowardly PR-dumb GOP.

[Theodore R.]

Even if the scenario with Dershowitz were to happen, one could count on Orrin G. Hatch, "R"-UT being the co-sponsor of the nomination, for he was co-sponsor of both Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994.

[xzins]

It is evident that the Senate has taken it upon itself to pervert the intent of the entire constitution by use of its parliamentary rules.

The Senate, minority or majority, can stop any business from going forward. I suspect that after a few years in the Senate the Senators see everything in terms of the needs and powers of the Senate.

They have arranged their systems in such a way that work can only be done that a supermajority is in agreement with.

[gakrak]

I am really getting tired of sending emails to senators about their lack of serving the people of the United States. They continually waffle on the judiciary problem. I have sent essentially the same email to Frist,McCain and they are still sitting on their hands.
This is what I sent:

Dear Senator Frist,
Once again I am compelled to write you with a heavy heart. It appears that once again, like your predecessor before you, you are about to cave into the minority on the Filibuster of President Bush’s judicial candidates. Do your job Senator! You have it in your power to provide for an up or down 51-vote acceptance of these judicial nominations. It is extremely important that the majority rules and don’t believe for a minute that if the tables were turned the Democrats would use what ever it took to defeat you.
In case you have not read the constitution recently a reminder may help you. No were under advise and consent is there a reference to a vote. The following is what it says:
"Article 2 Section 2


He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions, which shall expire at the End of their next Session. " Do you see a vote required for 60 votes? Well it appears that a simple letter to the President by 51 Senators would do the job. It does require that the Senate is in session and that a quorum is present.
Do what the people of our country hired you to do and do not delay. Amen.
Thank you for doing what is right.

[Mamie2010]

thanks for the bump

[lonevoice]

Rush is right. We can keep voting them in, but how long can we keep waiting for them to act like they represent their electorate rather than their own career ambitions? Old media becomes less powerful by the day, but our GOP pols are still acting like little girls terrified by the prospect of incurring the wrath of the NY Times or CBS. Please.