Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) likely made Senate history today, by filibustering his own bill, which would have authorized the President to raise the debt ceiling without relying on Congress.
In one fell swoop he demonstrated both the partisian nature of GOP-bagger politics, and the need for filibuster reform.
Since 2006 the Senated has been deadlocked over 380 times by filibuster, mainly a result of GOP-bagger actions.
As their main method of obstruction, the filibuster has prevented more than a few bills from reaching Pres. Obama's desk for signature. And while filibuster has been an accepted means of voicing dissent by the minority party, it has traditionally required that the party filibustering a specific bill take to the Senate floor and speak, without breaks, for the duration of the filibuster. It has also required a 60 vote majority to break a filibuster and bring a bill to the floor for a vote.
In recent times, however, simply issuing a threat of filibuster has become standard proceedure for blocking a bill, without the requirement of unbroken Senate floor speech.
Above and beyond that, McConnell's offer to put the debt ceiling bill up for a vote was accepted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid(D-AZ), at which point McConnell was forced to filibuster his own proposal, proving that he was not interested in passing the bill, but wanted instead to play "partisian politics" with the debt ceiling, as GOP-baggers did last time around.
Fortunately Sen. Reid had the wisdom to understand what was happening and call his bluff.
If an old dog was that far gone, any one of us would do the decent thing and make an appointment with the vet .. ..