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GOP Melts Down As Dick Durbin Uses Their Tactics For Advancing Biden Judges

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dick-durbin-judiciary-committee-biden-judges_n_6568fef4e4b066e398b6fb64

"It's called precedent," the Senate Judiciary Committee chair said of violating the same rule that Republicans ignored to move forward with judicial nominees.

GOP Melts Down As Dick Durbin Uses Their Tactics For Advancing Biden Judges

"It's called precedent," the Senate Judiciary Committee chair said of violating the same rule that Republicans ignored to move forward with judicial nominees.

98 comments

Nastybutler

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It's about time Dems started using the same tactics the GOP uses. Whiny hypocrites can't stand when the tables are turned.

HubertManne

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Still I understand why they hesitate. It basically drags our government permanently into shitty behavior. This is why they don't start this stuff but reluctantly utilize it. You don't want to be known as the guy going for the balls but if that is how the opponent is going to fight whelp then I guess we are ballers.

APassenger

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Democracy is a fist fight. I've grown tired watching Democrats spend their time wringing hands and clutching pearls.

THIS? This is good stuff. Get in the fray, fight for what's right, for us, for results. I'm enjoying this.

fmstrat

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This is a good opportunity to do it, and very calculated. Skipping the discussion portion would have no impact as it wouldn't have changed the vote, and it's the third discussion, so two already occurred. Its a "safe" way to demonstrate rules can't be dodged by one side.

Boddhisatva

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Nope. Same rules should apply for both. They should not be the least bit reluctant to use the same tools the Republicans do. If the Republicans are breaking rules then the Democrats need to break the same rules. If the Republicans don't like it, they can stop breaking the rules whenever they feel like it.

Stumblinbear

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I think until anyone in government sees consequences of their actions then nothing will change. If it's used against them, maybe they'll help legislate against it

Andonyx

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Holy cow! Is that where the term ballers comes from? I did not know that. I kinda assumed it was about pro basketball players, in reference to their wealth and success.

I get to reevaluate so much pop culture now.

HubertManne

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no no. certainly not. I often sorta joke around with use of language, especially in regard to modern terms like that.

Andonyx

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Oh. I feel sheepish. 😞

HubertManne

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HM. internet should be like hanging in the basement with friends. its all good.

MayvisDelacour

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Hear fuckin hear my friend! It's about damn time!

ook_the_librarian

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When Blackburn said again she wanted to talk, Cotton interjected, “Now I guess Sen. Durbin is not going to allow women to speak either. I thought that was sacrosanct in your party!”

Man, they thoroughly do not understand equality.

agent_flounder

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The GOP leadership consists of extremely manipulative sociopaths; they will say literally anything to benefit themselves or hurt others. They will weaponize anything with no shame and no hesitation. Everything they do is in bad faith.

Equality? They understand it but don't want it. Equality and fairness is the opposite of what they aspire to. They view themselves as better and therefore rules should benefit them and hurt others, to paraphrase the well known quote.

Asafum

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"The GOP leadership consists of extremely manipulative sociopaths"

A-fucking-men.

Understand this and you understand everything the GOP leadership says. It's never good faith, ever.

reverendsteveii

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Why would I want equality when I'm better than all these assholes?

---any republican

hglman

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They are not fools. They are evil. We will be fools if we do not internalize that reality.

flipht

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They understand. They just know if they say the shitty thing, it will give their bubba voters a misogyny hardon, which translates directly to votes.

Thassodar

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I don't get it: are they saying that their party doesn't let women speak and now Democrats are acting like them? It seems extremely backwards.

The question is mostly rhetorical, I understand exactly what's happening, I just can't help but jackie_chan_face.jpg

MotoAsh

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They are saying, "women dumb, lololol!" They're literally just petty children in adult bodies. There is no deeper point.

flipht

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This. It's all a giant, "Nuh-uh, you!"

They create a specious argument, present it as a straw man of "what democrats want," and then ridicule it as if they didn't make the whole thing up themselves.

It's dumb as shit, but it's all on purpose. These people are ivy League lawyers who took speech and debate. They know what a fallacy is, they just choose to use it for its effectiveness in mass psychology rather than actually governing or leading.

MotoAsh

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Yep. The leaders use it as petty distraction, and their petty followers eat it up while they have their pockets picked clean.

Caradoc879

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Right, if conservative women weren't fucking stupid (which they have to be to be conservatives), they'd know he was admitting Republicans don't care about them.

chatokun

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It's not about that. It's about stuff like Clearance Thomas does. He used to be a black panther fighting for black rights(was still a misogynist creep). Then he eventually switched sides, prob for money and power, but claimed the Dems were just as racists as Republicans, but Republicans said it to your face and Dems hid behind a facade.

The right continously parrots this narrative (which definitely has a kernel of truth especially with NIMBYs) in an effort to either discourage voter participation or to get lucky and get Pick Mes like Thomas and Candence Owen's.

Same reason idiots claim Trump says it like it is; they think everyone really is as racist and sexist as themselves, but that Dems are just virtue signaling while their side is "honest." They don't want to change, learn, or hide, they just want their shitty beliefs to be mainstream again.

mpa92643

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It's literally just the "so much for the tolerant left" crap with different words.

They absolutely understand this isn't an equality issue, but they see this as a cynical way to pander to their voters by claiming, once again, that Republicans are the victims of the big bad Democrats.

nnullzz

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“Cotton got so mad he started talking about himself in the third person.

“Mr. Cotton says the chairman needs to rethink his decision,” said Cotton, as his name came up in the roll call. “That’s what Mr. Cotton says.””

Lmao imagine getting you mad about the same tactics you supported, that you refer to yourself in the 3rd person.

Carighan

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I think from that point on I would refuse to call him any thing other than Mr Cotton, and always in a drawn out child-story like way.

agent_flounder

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Mr. Cotton: "How dare you use Mr. Cotton's dirty tricks against Mr. Cotton!"

cmbabul

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Mr Cotton is getting upset!

andrew_bidlaw

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I can't. It seems like an oddly specific trait of his.

FlyingSquid

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Trump does it too.

andrew_bidlaw

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Hm, didn't know it.

Googled it and it seems like not precise, just a sliiiiight marker they can be narcissists. Not convincing at all. Being a politician and with GOP tho...

lolcatnip

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Bob Dole used to do it. Back when he was alive, I mean.

Nobody

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George is getting upset!

CharlesDarwin

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Doesn't donnie do that all the time?

Though I wonder if he does it from habit due to all those years pretending to be John Barron, etc...

StorminNorman

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To be fair, you'd get a bit confused if you killed fiddy men too.

slurpeesoforion

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Cotton's pronouns are Cotton and Cotton. I wonder how Teddy feels about that.

CharlesDarwin

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That's weird. When the right is gaslighting others about injecting deeply radical activist judges into the system, they claim that judges should just be calling balls and strikes and so on. And now they are screaming about what are most likely center-right judges, LOL.

The butthurt is strong with the GOP, that's for sure.

reverendsteveii

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once you assume that everything they say and do is about manipulating the system to gain as much power as possible, then using that power to reward loyalists and inflict violence on people they don't like, everything starts to make sense. at this point the republican party is an attempt at a junta in the US.

Dagwood222

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Once you realize that they don't give a damn about the rules you know how to deal with them.

Vote all of them out.

hglman

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They just have no morals only self enrichment. They aren't butt hurt, they are evil.

Lyrl

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This article totally misses the point: they didn't care about the judges. They were trying to run out the clock to prevent subpoenas of major conservative donors to the Supreme Court from getting out of committee.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4335581-senate-gop-stages-hearing-walkout-to-protest-supreme-court-related-subpoenas/

buddascrayon

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Republicans generally count on news media missing the point of their shenanigans.

PeleSpirit

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Permanently Deleted

Pulptastic

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Clarence is trying to fuck around without finding out. I hope he finds out.

SinningStromgald

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Push them through Durbin up until the very last minute! Republicans made new rules to follow of their own accord previously so follow them.

FlyingSquid

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agent_flounder

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This is awesome.

My takeaway here is: never go full petard

SoleInvictus

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Wait, peter is the verb 'to fart ' in French? Oh man. I know a couple of Peters and don't like either. This is great.

hardaysknight

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I understand the point but man I’m having a hard time reading the 4 frames of comic. That sentence makes no sense no matter what order I read it in.

RaoulDook

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Petard also means fart. It means smelling your own fart.

DemBoSain

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Nothing wrong with that. Isn't that what elevators are for?

ook_the_librarian

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That's wrong on so many levels.

Tolookah

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Some children hate their logic thrown back at them.

massive_bereavement

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Putting all pieces and cards back in a hurry and taking the monopoly box home kind-of political strategy.

JunkMilesDavis

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I kind of wish everyone who set foot in that room was fitted with a device that electrically zaps them every time they say some disingenuous bullshit. It's always so uncomfortable to watch, and they know exactly what they're doing.

evatronic

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I was saying the other day we need a neutral third party the hangs around Congress and every time they do something unconstitutional or stupid, the whole ~~class~~ room has to watch Schoolhouse Rock episodes about civics.

Every time.

feminalpanda

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It's so hard to find a neutral observer when on party keeps trying to drag us back to the dark ages. How do you debate people that think a cosmic entity is personally planning out their lives.

alquicksilver

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I volunteer. I intend to just loop schoolhouse rock 24/7.

ObviouslyNotBanana

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Dick Durbin is a funny name.

miseducator

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It sounds like a noir, private eye name. Dick Armey is weirder though.

nilloc

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NH had a Dick Swett too.

Dick Armey is still a more disturbing image though.

4am

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He’s like, evil Rick Rubin

Tolookah

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Could have been worse. Could have been turbine

massive_bereavement

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Well, DO I have a new name for my next RPG play.

FlyingSquid

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Or turban. Although it still sounds like a little penis hat.

Nativeridge

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least it's not Dick Dunkin'

Thassodar

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Dunkin

Duncan would suffice.

Imagine if he was a member of Reality Winner's (real name) family:

Dick Winner

ObviouslyNotBanana

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Dick Wiener

kaklerbitmap

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Dirk Diggler vibes

fne8w2ah

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Reverse UNO.

cozz33

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I reject modern political labels but would say I lean slightly right. Over the years I’ve wrote to many of our politicians but Mr. Durbin is the only one who actually gave me the time of day, and for that he has my respect.

Pilkins

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Same, actually. He's the only office I've gotten a response from that shows my letter was actually read. Everyone else just sends the generic canned reply back.

Viking_Hippie

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Big "of COURSE two wrongs make a right" energy in this article and comment section 🤦

lolcatnip

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Bringing a gun to a gun fight isn't wrong.

Viking_Hippie

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Nobody's shooting them for allowing debate. It's not a binary where they have to either allow Republicans to obstruct endlessly or eliminate debate completely.

Confused_Emus

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They all had two prior opportunities to debate, though!

Viking_Hippie

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after Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) held votes on two of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees without allowing debate on them

Were these two opportunities for other nominees? You know that different people aren't interchangeable, right? 🤦

Heresy_generator

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That is an impressive selective reading of the article. One could be left to wonder how, in good faith, you could have possibly missed all of this:

Durbin went straight to their votes, saying senators already had two chances to debate their nominations.
...
“I understand what you’d like to do, but I’m saying, in fairness, we’ve debated these nominees twice,” Durbin said. “I ask the clerk to call the roll.”
...
Through all this, Durbin sat expressionless, waiting for breaks in the attacks to quietly direct the clerk to continue the roll call. He periodically reminded Republicans that they’d already had two chances to debate both nominees in two separate hearings.
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“This is the third time they were brought up,” he added of the two nominees at the center of Thursday’s hearing. “That’s the reason the ruling was made by the chair.”
...
A committee spokesperson noted that Kennedy spoke on Kasubhai in a Nov. 2 hearing and again in a Nov. 19 hearing, for a total of 12 minutes.
...
Graham spoke on both nominees in the Nov. 2 hearing, for about two minutes, too. And Cotton spoke on Kasubhai in the Nov. 9 hearing for about six minutes.

Trev625

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Why should Dems follow all the rules when repubs don't? If anyone cares about the rule, they should have punished the previous committee leaders even though they have an R by their name.

IzzyScissor

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Because rules are how society works. If both parties agree to throw out the rules.. we don't have a democracy anymore.

Confused_Emus

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So it’s turn the other cheek bullshit? They’ve had my left, right, and both ass cheeks. There are no cheeks left to turn.

Riven

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Love when people have that argument. I always politely remind them that we didn't just turn all of our cheeks to Hitler and hope he stopped. At a certain point you gotta go all in.

docAvid

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If one party ignores the rules, while the other party follows them, the party with no regard for the rules will take all the power, and we definitely won't have a democracy anymore.

Nastybutler

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Rules of procedure are hardly the bedrock of democracy

Viking_Hippie

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The same reason Dems should do a SHITLOAD of things differently than the Republicans: because they're better and more honest or at least pretending to be.

Jax

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That's exactly what Republicans have become adept at manipulating.

Viking_Hippie

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So do you want Dems to be like Republicans or are you just a massive hypocrite?

Jax

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I want Dems to stop being taken advantage of. Inaction has gotten us where we are.

Viking_Hippie

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They're not being taken advantage of. They're CHOOSING to not use powers they legitimately have in order to protect their owner donors from what they, the Dem leadership, say in public that they want to do.

Like back when they "had to" take the minimum wage increase that the vast majority of the population wants out of the infrastructure bill because one unelected bureaucrat didn't think it was a budget item 🙄

Jax

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Ok fair, that was a misnomer. They are definitely not being taken advantage of.

That being said, what exactly do you think should be happening? Because I think things are escalating because of decisions made by reps, and dems have to do something in response no?

Pot8o

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Well...a wrong is a negative thing. Two wrongs would be a double negative. A double negative is a positive and a positive thing is a right. Therefore two wrongs do in fact make a right. (Please note: I don't believe this and an just using words recreationally)

Viking_Hippie

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Careful about using words recreationally, that shit can be habit-forming!

Sincerely, wordplay addict and loving it 😁

hglman

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Its not the multiplicative of wrongs its just the summation. If you rob a bank and also commit wire fraud that person isn't responsible for a wire fraud worth of bank robberies. In fact, that statement is nonsense. Two wrongs add up having done more wrong.

MonsiuerPatEBrown

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This does not make me happy.

This is why using precedent and RROO is bad mojo for US American parliamentarianism. Very few act in good faith for a legal fiction that is the United States of America. And when the leader, the person in The Office Of The President, acts in bad faith we are fucked for generations if not permanently.

Now the representatives are abandoning their structure and tradition because the other side did, too.

We are done here.

The Hard Left needs to consider revolution.

edit: maybe i don't mean the revolution ... but the Senate of Rome became vestigial doing the same thing.

The question for me is this: who will be our person to go from Octavianus to Octavian in front of the world ?

DrDeadCrash

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I doesn't make me happy either, it's also the right thing for them to do in the circumstance. They can't pretend as though things didn't change, as consequences of the recent decades of Republican treachery.

It's tough to see a way out.

agent_flounder

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Though tempted to view these breaches of precedent by Republicans in isolation, I have to remind myself that the reasons they wanted to do so and got away with it are systemic. I mean, years ago, some of these things might have resulted in pressure from their own constituents. The Republicans have been chipping away at everything for decades to sculpt the nation into a shape that enables them to act with impunity. You can trace the progression in Congress starting with, say, Newt Gingrich. It's like an abusive sociopath overstepping boundaries little by little until they're in complete control.

That said, there was a time when politics broke out in fist fights. Thinking long term, it may not always be like this. But we can't expect a single election, or mere voting, to fix this.

DrDeadCrash

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You're absolutely correct, they've been working hard at creating this situation. I think the left will need to get mean for anything to change, maybe this is a step in that direction.

SoleInvictus

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Yep, it's been the boiling frog for decades now. It's surreal to compare 1970s Republican politician antics to what they're doing now. Back then, much of their current bullshit would have outraged their constituency and the nation in general. It would be the headlines of every paper. Now their supporters cheer for it, the corporate news spins it in a positive light if they report on it at all, and many more progressive voters just tune it out.

Boddhisatva

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Now the representatives are abandoning their structure and tradition because the other side did, too.

So the Democrats should just keep adhering to rules that allow the Republicans to block their every move despite the fact that the Republicans ignore those rules whenever they see an advantage to doing so?

That foolish mindset is why we now have the judicial cluster fuck which is putting our very Democracy is at risk. We are in a fight for our lives and freedoms and you don't go into such a fight with your hands tied behind your back. It is long past time the Democrats should have come out swinging.

hansl

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US American parliamentarianism

USA does not have a parliament.

the leader, the person in The Office Of The President

The POTUS specifically is NOT the leader. That’s the whole point of checks and balances; the three branches of government are equal in power and can veto each others. This very different of other countries with a Parliament system.

Techmaster

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USA does not have a parliament.

George Clinton and Bootsy Collins would disagree.