WV columnist Ben Fields on Sen Joe Manchin's argument for not supporting For the People Act

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Trip Gabriel
@tripgabriel
WV columnist Ben Fields on Sen Joe Manchin’s argument for not supporting For the People Act: so ‘bizarre it’s hard to take seriously.’

Ben Fields: Defending Manchin up to the point you can't (Opinion)
Those of us who have followed the career of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., knew that, eventually, his sometimes reasonable and other times obstinate centrism would create a problem for the
wvgazettemail.com
6:21 PM · Jun 10, 2021

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/columnists/ben-fields-defending-manchin-up-to-the-point-you-cant-opinion/article_27be8b21-be58-5555-aa9a-ae2e873cc347.html

*snip*

First off, if it’s good legislation — and Manchin seems to think on some level it is — then you back it.

Second, it was a former Republican president who sold the lie of election fraud and turned his rabid followers loose on the U.S. Capitol. Some GOP congressional members still won’t divorce themselves from that lie. Building upon that falsehood, it’s the GOP that is enacting these voter suppression laws across the country. Expecting Republican senators to act in good faith at this point is beyond naive idealism; it’s willful self-delusion. Manchin is still somehow surprised when his olive branches across the aisle are met with the business end of a machete.

The bill does have bipartisan support from the people who matter the most — the voters. Polling shows a majority of Americans, and West Virginians, Democrat and Republican, support the bill. Manchin should know how frustrating this feels for them. He had broad backing from the voters when he and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., introduced a bill for expanded firearm background checks after the massacre at Sandy Hook. The people were with him, but Senate Republicans, aside from Toomey, were not.

Manchin’s other major problem with the For the People Act is that it would require an effort to eliminate or somehow amend the filibuster, because getting 60 votes in a split Senate would be impossible. Manchin continually refers to the filibuster as something the Founding Fathers designed. I don’t know if he genuinely believes this and is simply incorrect, is intentionally trying to mislead people or is referencing that the idea of the filibuster was first discussed in the country’s infancy.

Whatever the case, Manchin needs to be clearer here. The filibuster is not in the Constitution. It’s a quirk of Senate rules that was discussed as a theory around the late 1780s and only put into practice much later. That theory came from Aaron Burr, the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. You could make an argument that the Founders believed more in the formal practice of shooting one another over social grievances than in the filibuster.

*snip*

[bahboo]

1. that's a helluva column....

I'll have to follow this guy....

[Tanuki]

2. Kicking...thank you!

[Nevilledog]

3. ...

[Fullduplexxx]

4. Yea but there's all that chamber of commerce money to think about