There were several surprising moments in Rand Paul’s 13-hour talking filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA. But there was one aspect of it that wasn’t surprising at all: Democrats ignored or dismissed it (with the exception of Ron Wyden). Reporters began asking Democrats where they were. You would think, the assumption went, that there would be plenty of Democrats–who were, after all, able to muster a lifetime’s worth of outrage at George Bush–who would feel right at home defending civil liberties from a wartime president.
Buzzfeed published a story getting some pretty weak excuses from Democrats in the Senate. It’s worth reading their explanations while keeping in mind the Democrats’ favorite manufactured storyline–that Republicans are so consumed by partisanship that they won’t even stand with Democrats who agree with them. But by far the best comment comes from this Huffington Post piece on how the liberal network MSNBC covered the filibuster. Aside from Rachel Maddow, who chose principle over partisanship, MSNBC’s viewers were treated to quite a spectacle:
Though the filibuster riveted social media, and was discussed on all of CNN’s prime time shows and every Fox News show except Bill O’Reilly’s, both Al Sharpton and Chris Matthews avoided it, spending none of their segments talking about Paul. Ed Schultz spent 58 seconds on the filibuster, using most of the time to read comments from Facebook followers who called Paul “obstructionist.” By comparison, he spent nearly seven minutes analyzing Bill O’Reilly’s body language.
I haven’t watched Ed Schultz’s show, but it sounds positively disturbing. The most revealing part of the Buzzfeed story is this:
“There was a sense the Paul filibuster was a distraction from the real issues of privacy and civil liberties, and was just not an issue worth spending an entire day on in the Senate,” said the Democratic staffer. “When Senators are getting ready to break ranks, you feel these tremors before it actually hits, and we didn’t hear any of that yesterday.”
Sen. Mark Begich, a Democratic from Alaska [sic], said he shared several of the concerns Paul expressed on the Senate floor, but felt that joining the filibuster would have been a distraction from Congress’s work on the federal budget.
The Democrats in the Senate haven’t passed a budget in years, so Begich’s excuse is laughable. Democrats are apparently working so hard at avoiding their basic constitutional responsibilities they don’t even have time to speak on the Senate floor for a couple of minutes. Perhaps this was Begich’s way of assuring the public they won’t see him on the Senate floor or taking any time off until they pass a budget.
But the comment from the Democratic staffer takes the cake. Democrats, apparently, were paying attention to who else was going to support the filibuster and which bandwagons would be available to them. No one joined the filibuster because no one else did either. But the Democratic staffer did inadvertently get one thing right when he said Democrats considered a filibuster about civil liberties to be a “distraction” from their work on civil liberties. Though the Democratic staffer doesn’t spell it out, this is because the Democratic Party’s work on civil liberties is concentrated on systematically removing and undermining them.
Instead of passing budgets or daring to criticize the leader of their party, congressional Democrats work to pass legislation like Obamacare, which forces everyone to purchase a product, requires taxpayers to fund procedures to which they may object, and insists that to comply with the law religious organizations must violate their beliefs because some Democratic voters want them to. Confiscatory taxes must go up so spending doesn’t have to come down, they demand. What the government thinks you need is their standard for whether you may retain your Second Amendment rights. And you should not be permitted to purchase food products that are legal but of which they disapprove.
The point here is not to state the obvious: that the Democrats are the party of big government. The point is that Democratic opposition to national security policy under Bush was not about civil liberties or federal overreach. Harry Reid didn’t try to undermine the soldiers’ mission by saying “this war is lost” before the very successful troop surge had a chance to prove him wrong because he cared about civil liberties, or knows what they are. Hillary Clinton didn’t grandstand from the Senate about the supposedly corrupt prosecution of a war she supported because she wants limited government.
And as the thousands of Democratic voters, activists, and politicians cheered on remote-controlled targeted assassination at the Democratic National Convention, led in that cheering by their Democratic president and Democratic vice president, they certainly weren’t thinking about civil liberties. They were thinking about winning an election, just as Reid and Clinton were, and just as Barack Obama himself was when he pretended to be concerned with civil liberties so he could win an election. There were no Democrats, besides Wyden, supporting the filibuster because they could not possibly care less about the topic, and because they are manifestly unwilling to jettison the one issue that finally enabled them to win the public’s trust on national security issues. That’s why Democrats sound confused when you ask them why they wouldn’t take a stand on behalf of civil liberties–they don’t understand why you’d even ask them the question.
Good post. Better than most of what we've been seeing at Commentary lately.
This is not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans; It's a matter of morality and respect for the law, of which Congress has none, vs. the upper .1% income group. n nBoth parties have been bought and paid for by the upper .1% income group via campaign contributions (expanded by the right wing Supreme Court) and by promises of lucrative employment when they leave office. n nMorality and law have nothing to do with it. All that matters is money and power. n nUntil the public begins to understand that all the talk about deficits, debt, the Constitution, big government, unemployment and taxes is just smoke, and the .1% wants the wealth gap expanded, and the politicians are paid to want that, too. Period. n nSo why bother talking about not killing U.S. citizens? The .1% doesn't care, so it simply does not matter to Congress. It's a Congressional non-issue. n nNow if someone would filibuster about prosecuting the crooked banksters, who stole and continue to steal trillions from the American public, that would be interesting — though it never will happen.
Sounds like there is no hope for political goodness in your political universe. May I suggest a different avocation?
If the upper .1% income group controls both parties, why did both parties agree to raise taxes on them?
I don't think Obama is "pretending" to care about civil liberties. he really DOES care, but only for some people. n nthat is, he's very concerned about gay rights, but he doesn't care about gun rights. he wants to make sure that black people aren't intimidated at the polls, but only if it's white people doing the intimidating. he announced in his Cairo speech that Muslim women have a right to wear the hijab (like that was a problem), but he doesn't think Jews have the right to build in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel and the Jewish people for the last, what, 4,000 years? n nliberals are undergoing some sort of weird cognitive dissonance with this president. waterboarding was criminal when the despised Bush did it. but killing random people with drones? as long as it's Obama doing it, it's alright. n
The sad aspect of this entire episode is just how many people refused to support the filibuster. I am not a fan of the Pauls, but Rand Paul was spot on about civil liberties. He demanded answers from an administration that refused to provide them. It is not only his right it is his duty as a Senator to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. What was also sad is the number of republicans, not just the has-been McCain, who refused to support the filibuster Some refused to support it merely because it was a Paul who led it and they didn't want to give credence to his other policies. Somehow the ACLU wasn't afraid of being considered a Paulite simply because they backed the filibuster. The failure to support the Paul filibuster shows an amazing lack of intelligence especially by those who consider themselves HIGH-information voters..
"It’s been more than a decade since 9/11, but we still haven’t figured out how to treat captured terrorists." WRONG–President Bush and his administration absolutely DID figure it out–GITMO was the BEST of ALL possible alternatives. The "Civil liberties" Democ-rats demagogued it and now they kill instead of question. Now the Holder-Hussein-Obama administration is going to try this guy in the Foley Square Court House. How STUPID is this, and where is Upchuck Schumer, his pet Gillibrand now and that F Troop of a New York Congressional delegation now?
Is the fact that Democrats don't really care about civil liberties news to anyone? Come on – this has been obvious for years. It was always a purely political issue for them, as evidenced by the fact that Democratic Congressional leaders were briefed on the Bush policies and apparently didn't object. Only when it became politically profitable did they do so, and then in extremely dishonest terms. It is this issue, primarily, which fills me with absolute disgust for liberals, for it exposes, perhaps more than any other single issue, the depths of their hypocrisy and willful ignorance – because it is so obvious! nAs for Wyden, he is my senator, alas, and I did email him thanking him for his courage. But anyone who associates themselves ever with this President, and the current Democratic leadership in Congress, is suspect. Wyden's opposition to various (major) aspects of Obamacare (which he voted for nonetheless) and now this suggest that he is willing to compromise his integrity in pretty big ways. I'm not sure that makes him a profile in courage. nLet's not forget that liberal hypocrisy on the civil liberties issue only served to encourage our enemies. Americans, Jordanians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis died because of it. Strong words, sure, but true. What was the terrorist violence in Iraq about, after all? Drumming up opposition to Bush in the US. And it worked, thanks to our contemporary fellow travelers.
I feel like I'm reading a script for the next Michael Moore flick. My experience trying to communicate with people who espouse the ideas you here espouse is unpromising (and I have plenty of it), but let me give it a shot. nYou assume a certain amount of "evilness" amongst a whole group of people, many of whom are undoubtedly truly good people who happen to have made a bunch of money (curses be upon them!). Why would they want to increase the gap? That makes no sense. Assume they want to increase their own wealth – that is unrelated to any gap. It proves nothing even if in the process of increasing their wealth the gap also increases. nBut what I find most bothersome about your arguments is, frankly, their childishness. The evil "them" somehow conspiring to control pretty much everything, while the rest of us sheep idiotically cooperate. All of the passion surrounding elections, congressional debates, etc. – much ado about nothing, apparently. All the world's a stage, the .1% the puppeteers, the 99.9% their obliging puppets. All the noise – mere distractions from what the Evil Ones are trying to really accomplish, increasing the wealth gap. nAnyway, if that is the reality, why bother complaining about it? Seriously – if approximately 300,000 people in this country are running EVERYTHING, which you certainly seem to believe, they are pretty powerful, man – probably too powerful for a mere schoolteacher like me to take on! And heck, let's assume you're right -as I sit here in my attic library, surrounded by approximately 4000 well-loved books, looking over my itinerary for yet another month long excursion to Europe with my family this summer, I'm wondering if I shouldn't send those dudes a thank you note. They've created a world in which a one income family (and a teacher's income, no less) can pay off a 30 year loan in 12 years, save up for college for the kid, travel all over the world, own two cars, and enjoy all the benefits of modern technology. In other words, many of us have a darned good life. If we are puppets, we have very benevolent puppeteers. nAnd if these guys have so much power, they are pretty smart, too, eh? Smart enough to keep the system working, I would assume. So if they see a threat to its stability – too much intransigence on their part, for example, might result in revolution (think France, 1789) – presumably they will intervene to prevent such an outcome. See – it's all going to be OK, even if you take the paranoid view. nHell, the more I think about it, the more I hope you are right! Whatever damage Obama has done is mere illusion – our masters will smooth over everything. At any rate, I suspect your true frustration with the system as you see it is not that there are those who control everything, just that you aren't one of them. Liberals don't mind lording it over others – plenty examples of that. (Or are those examples smoke and mirrors, thrust upon us by the puppeteers to distract us from their real agenda? Shoot – your argument is watertight!)
Thanks for your sarcasm. I hope your students are more impressed than me.You asked a question: “Why would they want to increase the gap?”Here is the answer: Without the gap, no one would be rich.It is the gap that makes them rich, and the greater the gap, the richer and more powerful they are.Example: If you made $10,000 per year, would you be rich? Answer: Yes, if everyone else made $1,000 per year. But no, if everyone else made $50,000 per year.So the key to being rich and powerful is the gap. So answer your own question: Why would anyone want to increase their wealth and power?
No, you would not be rich if you made $10,000 a year. Not in our planet. Maybe in yours.
You really don't get it, do you?You would be rich if, as I clearly said –if everyone else made $1,000. Is that really so hard to understand? During the Great Depression, anyone making $10,000 a year would be extremely well off, if not outright rich.The word “rich” is a comparative term, not an absolute term.Think, or at least try to.
I get it, dude. If I lived in a small town in Appalacia where no one but me made more than $20K a year, and I made $100K, then I'd be "rich" in that town. But that does not make me rich by any normal definition. Positing a world in which "everyone" made $1,000 but me is just so far from reality as to be iditoic. n nBut let's not get distracted from your original idiociy: the idea that the top earners don't care about their taxes–they would be fine have nearly all their income taxed away, so long as there was still a substantial gap. If you believe that you are moron.
Rodger, n nYou make no sense. Although individuals like Buffet may want their taxes raised, as a category the upper .1% certainly does not want its taxes raised. That is sheer idiocy to think that.