Twenty-five Republican senators, led by Mitch McConnell and John "The Maverick" McCain turned their back on the American people yesterday. They did so by choosing to vote in favor of invoking cloture on the House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government past Monday. This gutless act had the disastrous result of putting ‘Dingy Harry’ Reid in the rather enviable position of then being able to strip the bill of its provision for defunding Obamacare with a simple party-line majority vote instead of the 60 votes needed on cloture.
House and Senate conservatives had hoped that the 46 Republicans in the Senate would join together and oppose cloture until ‘Dingy Harry’ agreed to use a Senate rule that requires amendments to clear a 60-vote threshold. Had our Senate Republicans actually done that, ‘Dingy Harry’ would have needed to put together a bipartisan 60-vote majority in order to restore Obamacare funding. But nope, they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Senate Republicans split on the cloture vote, with twenty-five joining old ‘Dingy’ and his Democrats.
As predicted, soon after the 25 Republicans joined with all Senate Democrats to invoke cloture on the CR, ‘Dingy Harry’ offered up an amendment to strip the CR of the language defunding Obamacare. ‘Dingy’s’ amendment resurrecting Obamacare, which at that point, after cloture, needed only a simple majority to pass, was approved on a party-line vote. All 54 Democrats voted for it, and all 44 Republicans present in the Senate at the time voted against it. But that vote was simply a way for the Republicans to ‘claim’ they had voted to defund Obamacare.
Here are the 25 Republicans who chose to stand with ‘Dingy Harry’ Reid instead of with the American people. We must remember these names come election time:
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
John Barrasso (R-WY)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
John Boozman (R-AR)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Jeff Chiesa (R-NJ)
Daniel Coats (R-IN)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
John Hoeven (R-ND)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)
John McCain (R-AZ)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
John Thune (R-SD)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)
And these are the 19 Republicans who stood with "We the People", and told ‘Dingy Harry’ to go screw himself. We must also remember their names as well, but for entirely different reasons:
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Deb Fischer (R-NE)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Dean Heller (R-NV)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Mike Lee (R-UT)
Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Rand Paul (R-KY)
Rob Portman (R-OH)
James Risch (R-ID)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Pat Toomey (R-PA)
David Vitter (R-LA)
To say that I’m disappointed in the outcome is an understatement. But at the same time I can’t really say that I’m surprised. Knowing the caliber of some of those individuals that we have in the Senate, I can’t say that I’m shocked at how things turned out. Republicans, at least a majority in the Senate, have once again proven themselves to be gutless cowards while choosing to do the equivalent of throwing their colleagues in the House under the bus. And, sadly, they demonstrated little conscious, being able to do so quite easily, without nary batting an eye.
We’re running out of time here, and we don’t have time to replace all of those who deserve to be replaced. A secretary of defense that I had a great deal of respect for, and still do, once said that you have to go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. That would be the equivalent of where we now find ourselves. So our battle has been made more difficult, but if we can believe Ted Cruz, not impossible. But the weight on John Boehner’s shoulders just increased significantly. Now we must wait and see if he is up to what will be a crucial challenge.
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