Chris Murphy thread: The death of honor in the Senate and why we can't just let it go...

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Unrolled thread here
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1309113788487041025.html

1/ A THREAD on the death of honor in the Senate and why we can't just let it go and brush it off as "Republicans doing Republican things".

2/ Democracy is predicated on the exercise of restraint and fair play. Our Constitution has enormous amounts of wiggle room in it - enough so that a democracy could be converted to a one party system without a technical violation of our founding document.

3/ For instance, the founding fathers didn't require a Senate vote on a President's nominee for the Supreme Court bc they assumed fair play. They never envisioned a situation like 2016 where the Senate's majority party refused to vote on the president's pick.

4/ McConnell's figured out the Constitution lets him operate the Senate any way he wants, and he's moved to demolish tradition at a dizzying pace. SCOTUS filibuster, blue slips gone. Debate on nominees curtailed. He's tasted how easy it is to grab power, and he isn't finished.

5/ And there's no logical end. He can keep cutting down debate. He can start denying resources to the minority party. Now that he's made the decision that power is more important than comity, he can effectively muzzle the opposition.

6/ Further, now that lying has been normalized (and newsflash - they were lying when they said there was a new rule not to confirm judges in an election year), an institution that requires deal-making and compromise cannot function - if keeping your word in now passe.

7/ Any democratic parliamentary body runs on the principles of restraint and honor. And in the last 10 days, McConnell and his caucus have destroyed both.

Now there are new rules - I get this and I will have to live by them - but it's potentially lethal for our democracy.

[Maven]

1. Maybe an institution that relies on 'honor' to prevent the party that represents the minority

from imposing one-party rule against the will of the majority isn't a great institution...?

[Nevilledog]

2. Right?

[Hekate]

3. There was a time when pledging "our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor" meant something...

There was a time when taking an oath “before God” put a man in an awesome and even terrifying space. It was more than words, even to rational Deists like Thomas Jefferson.

Nowadays, when a big chunk of the US populace is competing for who can be the mostest bestest Christian of all in the public sphere, our modern Christians in the GOP never blanch or tremble at the lies they say immediately after taking an oath to tell the truth, nor do they fear the loss of their “sacred honor” when actually betraying our Constitution and country. They have no sense that honor is something to value highly, and they have no sense of shame to hold them back.

The fault lies not in the Constitution, which (like RBG) I take to be a living document, but in the living Americans of the 21st century. The Constitution calls on each generation to interpret it anew and breathe new life into it. In the last 40 years, however, there has been a slow strangulation by American citizens themselves and the politicians they elect, and now the Senate is poised to plunge a knife into the heart of the Constitution.

[dchill]

4. K&R.