“This Thinking Is Just Bizarre”: The Gun Debate GOP Senators Are Afraid To Have
Two weeks ago, a trio of right-wing senators — Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah — released a statement explaining their intention to block a debate on any legislation that changes any federal gun law in any way. Soon after, the filibuster threat grew to five members, and over the weekend, the total reached 12.
Remember, these dozen GOP senators aren’t just saying they’re going to oppose legislation, and they’re not merely threatening to block final passage. Rather, these 12 senators are saying they’re not prepared to allow the Senate to even have a debate — even if the legislation would save lives, even if the ideas have bipartisan support, and even if the bill is entirely permissible under the Constitution.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and raised a fair point.
For those who can’t watch clips online, McCain said of Senate Republicans’ vow to filibuster the motion to proceed:
“I don’t understand it. The purpose of the United States Senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand…. What are we afraid of? Why would we not want — if this issue is as important as all of us think it is, why not take it to the world’s greatest deliberative — that’s the greatest exaggeration in history, by the way — but why not take up an amendment and debate?”
I’m not generally inclined to agree with John McCain, but on this, he’s exactly right.
Let’s be clear about the nature of the threat: these 12 Republican senators are saying they’re unwilling to allow the Senate to debate gun legislation. It would be tough enough to craft a bill that can pass both chambers of Congress, but we now have a dozen Republicans who are so scared, they’re afraid of a discussion.
It’s rather bizarre. To reiterate a point from two weeks ago, from the far-right’s perspective, the worst case scenario is easy to imagine: the Senate might pass a bill that Republicans and the NRA don’t like. But even under these circumstances, the legislation would go to the Republican-led House, where progressive legislation has no credible chance of success.
So why go to so much effort to block an argument on the floor of the Senate?
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), not exactly a moderate in his caucus, has a compelling possible explanation (via Igor Volsky).
After Mr. Coburn was asked multiple times an identically worded question about whether he would join Mr. Paul’s effort to block gun legislation as he traveled around Oklahoma in recent days, Mr. Coburn bristled at the idea that Mr. Paul would threaten to filibuster a bill before its contents were made final.
“Is that about filibustering a bill to protect the Second Amendment, or is that about Rand Paul?” Mr. Coburn said at a town-hall meeting at the Oklahoma Sports Museum in Guthrie, Okla., on Wednesday.
What a good question.
As an additional bit of context, let’s also note that the Republican senators whose names are most frequently associated with national 2016 ambitions — Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz — are all part of the dozen who are desperate to block the debate.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 8, 2013
“It’s All About Me”: Rand Paul Criticized By Fellow Republican For Threatening To Filibuster Gun Bill He Hasn’t Even Seen
Thirteen Republican senators have pledged to filibuster a senate debate about new gun safety measures, insisting in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that they will “oppose any legislation that would infringe on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.” The threat, which Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) first made last week without seeing the bill, comes just days before the body prepares to consider the first comprehensive gun legislation in the aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The package will expand restrictions against gun trafficking, invest in school safety and provide for universal background checks of all gun purchases.
But one top Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), is speaking out publicly against the group, questioning the wisdom of promising to filibuster legislation that lawmakers have yet to finalize:
After Mr. Coburn was asked multiple times an identically worded question about whether he would join Mr. Paul’s effort to block gun legislation as he traveled around Oklahoma in recent days, Mr. Coburn bristled at the idea that Mr. Paul would threaten to filibuster a bill before its contents were made final.
“Is that about filibustering a bill to protect the Second Amendment, or is that about Rand Paul?” Mr. Coburn said at a town-hall meeting at the Oklahoma Sports Museum in Guthrie, Okla., on Wednesday. “I’ve done more filibusters than Rand Paul is old,” Mr. Coburn said, but he added that he doesn’t announce such moves before he understands the bill.
Coburn is working on compromise legislation that would expand background checks to all gun purchases, but would not require private sellers to keep a record of the transaction, which gun safety advocates say would ensure that checks are being properly conducted and allow the entire chain of custody to be reconstructed in the event the gun is later recovered in a crime.
Should the Republicans proceed to filibuster on the motion to proceed to the gun package, Reid could take advantage of a new Senate rule “by promising each party two amendments on the legislation.” “Under that scenario, Paul and his allies would still get a chance to raise their objections on the floor for hours on end, but they couldn’t stop the Senate from starting debate on the bill,” Politico reports.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, April 6, 2013
“More Republican Fringe Views”: Tinfoil Hats, Black Helicopters, And The Politics Of Paranoia
Public Policy Polling released the results of an interesting survey this week, which you probably heard a bit about — it dealt with public attitudes towards conspiracy theories (some of which weren’t really conspiracy theories). Not surprisingly, we learned that a lot of folks believe a lot of strange stuff.
But it’s worth appreciating the fact that this phenomenon isn’t limited to the general public. We’re occasionally reminded that federal lawmakers buy into some bizarre conspiracy theories, too.
We talked yesterday, for example, about the Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations, and the oddity of watching Republicans align themselves with the position adopted by Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Let’s also take a moment, though, to highlight the GOP’s reasons for doing so. For example, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) appeared on a right-wing radio show yesterday, arguing that the treaty would “literally change” and “essentially repeal” the Second Amendment. This is patently ridiculous, but Fleming said it anyway.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), whose affinity for conspiracy theories is bordering on unhealthy, wrote a fundraising letter on the treaty for the National Association for Gun Rights that was truly crazy, even for him.
“I don’t know about you, but watching anti-American globalists plot against our Constitution makes me sick. […]
If we’re to succeed, we must fight back now. That’s why I’m helping lead the fight to defeat the UN “Small Arms Treaty” in the United States Senate. And it’s why I need your help today.
Will you join me by taking a public stand against the UN “Small Arms Treaty” and sign the Official Firearms Sovereignty Survey right away? Ultimately, UN bureaucrats will stop at nothing to register, ban and CONFISCATE firearms owned by private citizens like YOU.
Paul’s letter added that the United Nations intends to “force” the United States to “CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL ‘unauthorized’ civilian firearms,” while creating “an INTERNATIONAL gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun CONFISCATION,” which isn’t part of the Arms Trade Treaty and also isn’t sane.
But it does offer a reminder about why the politics of paranoia makes governing so difficult.
Reflecting on the hysterical opposition to the ATT, Greg Sargent raised an important point yesterday.
Republican Senators (and too many red state Dems) have fallen into line behind the NRA’s lurid claims not just about the treaty, but also about gun control, endorsing its paranoid and false claim that expanding background checks would create a national gun registry. With United States Senators eagerly feeding such fringe views rather than engaging in genuine policy debate, is it any wonder that it’s a major struggle to implement even the most modest and sensible effort to limit the ongoing murder of innocents, one that is supported by nine in 10 Americans?
I strongly agree, and the more I thought about it, the more I started noticing how broadly applicable this is.
We couldn’t pass a disability treaty because Republicans believed conspiracy theories. We can’t address global warming because Republicans believe the entirety of climate science is a giant conspiracy. We couldn’t pass bipartisan health care reform in part because Republicans were too heavily invested in the “death panel” conspiracy theory.
This problem, in other words, keeps coming up, and probably won’t get any better until the electorate sends fewer conspiracy theorists to Washington.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, April 4, 2013
“Don’t Let Senators Off The Hook”: There Is No Logical Way To Argue Expanding Background Checks Infringes On Constitutional Rights
Every Senator who is refusing to support expanded background checks — Republican or Democrat — needs to be asked a simple question: Do you support the current background system, or do you see it as an infringement on the rights of the law-abiding?
Every one of them will answer with a Yes, because they are taking refuge behind the idea that the current law needs to be strengthened in various ways but not expanded. Once they are on record confirming they don’t view the current system as a threat to Constitutional rights, the arguments against expanding it dissolve into incoherence.
The Senators who are threatening to filibuster Obama’s gun proposals (Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee) have said that they will “oppose any legislation that infringes on the American people’s right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to any additional government surveillance.”
But even libertarian Tea Party chieftain Rand Paul has allowed that current background checks “work.” And on the Sunday shows yesterday, other Republican Senators, such as Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, said they could support improving the current system through better data sharing by states on the mentally ill and other such moves, while opposing expanding checks to private sales. As Steve Benen notes, this means “leaving the massive gun show loophole in place.”
That’s true, and I’d add one other point: It means these Senators view the current background check law as constitutional. Which means there is no logical way to argue that expanding background checks is an infringement on Constitutional rights. Here’s why: The compromise background check expansion being negotiated would simply build on current law, which requires gun dealers (who would conduct the checks on private sales) to keep records on those sales; it explicitly forbids the creation of a national registry; and it requires the feds to destroy info collected on legit gun transfers within 24 hours. None of this — none of it — would change. If the current law is not an infringement on constitutional rights, then neither is an expanded one.
To be fair, in their Sunday appearances, Graham and Flake didn’t argue against the proposal on Constitutional grounds, as the four Tea Party Senators have. But they both dissembled about the plan, with Graham falsely suggesting a father-son gun transfer could be targeted (the compromise proposal under discussion exempts family members), and Flake lamenting new “paperwork requirements” (which would be identical to current ones).
All these Senators should be pressed on whether they support the law requiring private citizens who purchase guns from federally licensed dealers to undergo a check. When they confirm that they do, they need to be pressed on why applying that same system to private sales — in which private citizens who buy guns from another private citizen must undergo a check — is objectionable, particularly since for the buyers, nothing changes, and since these Senators themselves concede we need to do a better job preventing criminals and the mentally from buying guns.
Senators holding out against expanded checks need to be pushed hard on this stuff. This is an important proposal, with American lives potentially at stake.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, The Plum Line, April 1, 2013
Marco Rubio’s Foreign Policy: Blind, Irrational, And Dangerous
In a speech at the University of Louisville this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned against U.S. “retreat” from the world, which he claimed would result in a vacuum filled by “chaos” and “tyranny.”
These remarks have been interpreted as a rebuke to the foreign policy views of Rubio’s colleague and possible 2016 rival, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But they are more important than an example of intra-party feuding. These statements reflect the seriously flawed assumptions of Rubio and other hawkish interventionists about what American engagement in the world requires, and they reveal just how alarmist and outdated Rubio’s worldview is. And it is because Rubio’s worldview continues to be the one that prevails among Republican leaders that it merits closer inspection.
“This is what will replace us on the global stage: chaos and tyranny,” Rubio warned. On one level, this is rather crude fear-mongering, but there is more to Rubio’s argument than that. When he warned that “chaos” and “tyrannical governments” will fill a void left by U.S. “retreat,” Rubio was showing his continued reliance on the arguments of Robert Kagan, whose book, The World America Made, Rubio referred to frequently in his foreign policy address at the Brookings Institution last year.
It has become a common hawkish refrain that the U.S. cannot withdraw from any conflict or reduce its commitments anywhere in the world without inviting either chaos or risking the increased influence of authoritarian major powers or both. Kagan has been one of the strongest proponents of this view, and Rubio appears to have adopted most of Kagan’s arguments. This view both overstates the importance of an extremely activist U.S. foreign policy for international stability and underestimates the ability of rising democratic powers to assume regional responsibilities.
The idea that U.S. preeminence in the world must necessarily be “replaced” by the global dominance of authoritarian governments hasn’t made any sense in over 20 years. Today, major authoritarian powers are significantly less powerful and less ambitious in their foreign policy goals than America’s 20th century rivals. Today, many of the world’s rising powers are democratic and have no interest in falling in line behind Chinese or Russian “leadership.” So the implication in Rubio’s speech that there is a danger of another state becoming the world’s predominant military power is sheer alarmism designed to justify an exorbitant military budget that is larger in real terms than it was at the height of the Reagan-era build-up. The fear of being surpassed militarily by another major power has rarely been more unfounded, and the danger to the U.S. from pursuing a less activist role abroad has rarely been smaller. Rubio’s vision of America’s role takes none of this into account.
Another flaw in Rubio’s thinking: His definition of what constitutes engagement with and “retreat” from the world is heavily skewed by his apparent conviction that the U.S. should regularly entangle itself in the internal conflicts of other countries. According to that definition, failing to intervene or to become more involved in the conflict in Syria, for example, is viewed as equivalent to “disengagement.” Rubio wanted a larger, faster intervention in Libya, and he wants greater U.S. involvement in Syria as well. While he said that that the U.S. shouldn’t be involved in “every civil war and every conflict,” Rubio’s record to date shows that he has yet to see a high-profile foreign conflict in which he didn’t want the U.S. heavily involved.
There is no danger that the U.S. will cease to engage with the rest of the world. But there are very real dangers that U.S. foreign policy will remain overly militarized and excessively confrontational toward other states. Rubio’s foreign policy would require more of both. The greatest damage to international peace and stability that the U.S. can do is if it keeps resorting to force to handle crises and disputes as often in this decade as it did in the last. Support for “retreat” is the last thing that Americans need to worry about from their policymakers and political leaders, many of whom remain only too eager to find reasons to sound the attack.
By: Daniel Larison, Contributing Editor at The American Conservative, The Week, March 29, 2013
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