Gibbs won’t promise that Dems won’t use Slaughter strategy for other bills

posted at 6:51 pm on March 18, 2010 by Allahpundit

Via Breitbart, of course he won’t promise. If he admits that it’s an extraordinary, and extraordinarily dubious, move that should be used sparingly if at all, he destroys its credibility as a means of passing O-Care. If he says that it’s A-OK and fit to be used whenever they like because, as the oft-repeated talking point goes, the stupid public doesn’t care about procedure, then he’ll draw even more media scrutiny to the process. So he’s stuck in no man’s land. But here’s the irony: Given how ruthless they’ve been in trying to ram this through and how contentious the battle will be during reconciliation, partisan relations will be so thoroughly poisoned when it’s over that they might be forced to resort to arcane procedures to pass anything. This is, quite possibly, the beginning of a new phase in bitter gridlock where even the small jobs bill that drew 11 Republican votes in the Senate will be unable to pass and reconciliation will be required to move even on that. Wonderful.

Unasked and unanswered here: How Gibbs feels about the White House blessing this tactic as a legitimate way to pass unpopular legislation vis-a-vis future Republican majorities in the House. Two can play at this game, after all. And will.

Update: In a similar vein, and laying aside the merits of O-Care, read Fred Barnes on how this isn’t the end of America’s long national nightmare but only the very, very beginning.

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If this continues much longer, the dissolution of our civil bonds – which began many decades earlier – will become self-evident. We will see civil disobedience, political action in the streets by those who oppose this mess, and political assasination. We are experiencing nothing less than a wholesale revolution and the destruction of a way of life and a once cherished form of government.

microfiction on March 19, 2010 at 10:37 AM

I am surprised that anyone here is surprised that Dems will do whatever it takes to take away more of our freedom by passing this legislation for our own good. After all, we are so stupid that we elected them, so we are getting what we deserve with them.

TimothyJ on March 19, 2010 at 10:39 AM

Allahpundit: “Unasked and unanswered here: How Gibbs feels about the White House blessing this tactic as a legitimate way to pass unpopular legislation vis-a-vis future Republican majorities in the House. Two can play at this game, after all. And will.“

God forbid.

But that’s what, I regrettably suppose, is to be expected from a blogger such as AP who does not seem to put much if any value on the concept of
Mutually Assured Destruction of the United States Constitution.

Lockstein13 on March 19, 2010 at 11:04 AM

Unasked and unanswered here: How Gibbs feels about the White House blessing this tactic as a legitimate way to pass unpopular legislation vis-a-vis future Republican majorities in the House. Two can play at this game, after all. And will.

Please, you can’t stand to see a Republican “polarize” Democrats on the Tonight Show three years before an election.

Chris_Balsz on March 19, 2010 at 11:29 AM

Let me make this simple:
Would you let Gibbs baby sit for you?

Cybergeezer on March 19, 2010 at 12:02 PM

If this bill is executed by the Slaughter rule and goes to Obama’s desk without ever being voted on and Constitutionally passed by Congress, wouldn’t Obama in reality only be signing an Executive Order? Meaning his replacement in 2012 can simply reverse it, since it’s not “law”?

Beo on March 19, 2010 at 1:44 PM

Allahpundit: “Unasked and unanswered here: How Gibbs feels about the White House blessing this tactic as a legitimate way to pass unpopular legislation vis-a-vis future Republican majorities in the House. Two can play at this game, after all. And will.“

The fraud is very old. After the Republican Revolution in the 90s, the media cried that they would use these tactics for out of control defense spending and OMG!!! school prayer or tragically un-American Constitutional Amendments to say, oh, protect the US Flag. Republicans never did anything close to this Slaughter tactic and they backed down when the polls said some of what they thought were honorable pursuits in legislation were just not supported by a majority of Americans. But now it seems the same media that was warning America in the 90s about the out of control Republicans, is completely in favor of any illegal tactic to change America into their image of how things should be.

Let’s start the revolution in November!!!

After, we repeal every piece of America destroying legislation these crooks perpetrated and then…

We investigate, prosecute and jail any found to have acted outside The Constitution.

This is America. We have fought tooth and nail for everything we are. We have been the world’s defender of freedom for more than a century and now it’s time to take care of business at home.

Freaking November it begins. The real ID2.

hawkdriver on March 20, 2010 at 2:12 AM

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