The Republican Senate majority should kill the Senate’s traditional 60-vote filibuster, and gain a huge advantage over the rule-breaking, lawless Democratic Party, says syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.
“I’ve been radicalized. By Harry Reid and Barack Obama. Goodbye moderation and sweet reason,” he wrote in his weekly column.
“In the fourth quarter of his presidency, Obama unbound is abusing presidential authority at will to secure a legacy on everything from environmental regulation to immigration, the laws of which he would unilaterally suspend,” Krauthammer wrote.
And the 46 Senate Democrats are using the filibuster rules to block the GOP’s 54-seat majority to paralyze the GOP’s pushback.
Obama and the Democrats failed to pass his top-priority amnesty in 2013 and 2014, and he’s lost the fight for public opinion on the immigration issue. Without a path forward through Congress, he escalated the fight by declaring in November he has the right to hand out nearly 5 million work-permits to illegal immigrants, even though many Americans don’t have jobs.
Congressional “Republicans find themselves on the sidelines bleating plaintively about violations of the separation of powers,” Krauthammer wrote.
“They thought they found an instrument of resistance in funding for the Department of Homeland Security [until Feb. 27, but]… as the night follows day, Republicans, not the filibustering Democrats, will be blamed for shutting down DHS and jeopardizing the nation’s safety at a time of heightened international terrorism,” he added.
With no way to block Obama’s power-grab, the GOP needs to match the Democrats’ ruthlessness, according to Krauthammer.
“Push the button,” he wrote.
“Abolish the filibuster… immediately pass the House homeland security bill [which bars spending on the amnesty] and send it to the president… the politics will have been radically changed,” Krauthammer stated.
“The current story line is: Republican Congress won’t fund DHS, threatening to shut it down. New story line: Obama vetoes funding for DHS, threatening to shut it down,” he continued. “A presidential veto would lead to a more fair allocation of blame. And it’s blame allocation that determines which side blinks first. The president will have a major incentive to find some face-saving finesse.”
“But filibuster abolition is more than a one-shot proposition. It would radically change the next two years. It would give Republicans full control of the Congress and allow swift passage of a GOP agenda,” he wrote.
“The GOP could be sending bill after bill to the president’s desk — on tax reform, trade, Obamacare and, if it has the guts, immigration,” he said.
“Obama’s choice? Sign, veto or negotiate a compromise. If he vetoes, then Republicans take that issue to the country in 2016,” the conservative columnist wrote.
“Go bold. Go nuclear. Abolish the filibuster.”