Yet the NRA wins again. Even after a tragedy the likes of Newtown. Even with 20 children along with some dedicated educators being mowed down in a first grade classroom the NRA trumped everything. As top of front page headline at Huffington Post puts it No Justice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/background-checks-bill_n_3103341.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The title of this post I get from Tom Brown who had this comment in my post yesterday-this was before it's 54-46 defeat, though pessimism was already setting in:
"I think the NRA may ultimately have overplayed their hand here, and their members should be upset about it. Gun control advocates have every right to get fired up about this embarrassing capitulation to the NRA. They SHOULD make those responsible for this pay. In the end, this may well contribute to a much more gun control friendly set of senators and congressman being elected... in which case the NRA may have won the battle but lost the war. Personally I'm for STRONG background checks. This vote is embarrassing for our nation."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-background-checks-90-of-public.html
It certainly is. I do think, however, that Tom is also right that the NRA may ultimately prove to have overplayed their hand. As Greg Sargent argues, they won a battle, but may end up losing the war. To be sure, the common wisdom is that this defeat will show that the NRA is unbeatable if even after Newtown they still win. Sargent points out that there are other ways of looking at it.
In our political system things take time-to an extent this is by the design of the founders. We can see this in many fights not just guns though when you look at it you see that the rule has been that gun control measures take time. Healthcare took many years to finally pass-almost 20 years after Hillary Clinton's aborted effort. Gay rights has achieved some new heights recently but this was after many defeats-in the 90s everything seemed to be going the wrong way, from DADT to Clinton supporting DOMA.
"This is obviously a substantial setback for those who support stronger gun legislation, and for one of the president’s top agenda items.However, I think Greg’s long-term optimism from this morning is entirely appropriate. The bottom line about legislating in any system — let alone America’s convoluted Madisonian system — is that it’s really hard to do. Never mind the procedural hurdles, including the Senate supermajority that filibustering Republicans insist upon for all measures; never mind the need to either have unified party control of government (rare) or bipartisan support (hard to get). Just start at the beginning: Getting agreement among those who feel strongly about an issue is really difficult; getting agreement among those strong supporters and the willing-to-support that are usually needed to get anything done is even harder."
"That’s a good part of the story of why the Affordable Care Act passed in 2009 and 2010 while Bill Clinton’s initiative failed nearly two decades earlier. It just takes time, energy, and sustained effort to get things done in a democracy, especially in our system."
"There’s a whole history here that bears this out: Congress has repeatedly been spurred by shootings to act on proposals that originated in the wake of previous shootings. It has repeatedly taken years to pass gun control legislation. The Gun Control Act of 1968 passed in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, but it originated in the wake of the assassination of JFK five years earlier. The Brady Law passed in 1993, many years after the shooting of Jim Brady. Six years later still, after the 1999 Columbine massacre, the Senate passed a bill closing the loophole in the law (it failed in the House)."
"If Manchin-Toomey dies, there will a lot of chatter to the effect that the chance for action is now gone for good. And it’s true that the Newtown shooting, because of its particularly horrific nature, did seem to create circumstances for action that had long been lacking. But the history of gun control tells us this is sometimes a long game."
"If Manchin-Toomey dies, there also will be a lot of chatter to the effect that this was inevitable, that the NRA’s grip on Congress is invincible, and that it was naïve to imagine that anything could happen, even after Newtown. This is all just wrong, and indeed, it lets culpable Senators off the hook. If the proposal goes down, it will be because a few Senators did the wrong thing. It was not at all inevitable that a half dozen Senators who were genuinely undecided voted one way and not the other. The death of this proposal will be on them."
Interesting way to think about it: even the assassination of JFK didn't lead to immediate action; instead gun control had to wait 5 years. It was also many years before Brady achieved justice.
So gun control has failed today but that doesn't mean it will in the future. Future successes will have their starting point from the current push. As to what's to blame it seems clear that a handful of Senators put their own political skins above what's good for the country. In the future, however, if there's another tragedy, God forbid, they may regret this.
The President's anger about this was great to see. It wasn't just the GOP however. At the end of the day 4 Democrats also voted against it-with 4 Republicans voting for it. Harry Reid voted against it for technical reasons-to enable him to bring it back up for a vote in the future.
So it's a disappointing and embarrassing day in which we failed to get justice to the 20 innocent children mowed down with an assault weapon with limitless gun magazines in Newtown. In the long haul though this victory for the NRA and GOP may well prove Pyrrhic.
When the tables are turned and the Democrats hold a filibuster-strong minority in the Senate, and they use a filibuster to kill something the Republicans REALLY want... how long do you think it will take for the Republicans to in turn kill the filibuster?? I think it will take all of 10 minutes! The GOP keeps upping the ante in their game of "total war" against their opponents. And for what? I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteWell I guess when they say they don't believe in evolution they mean it! Did you see in Sargent's article the attacks planned to kill the immigration bill?
The more desperate the extremist wing of the GOP gets to remain reactionary against all reason and long term political strategy, the harder the fall is going to be when the tipping point does come, and it will come! It's as if they can't help themselves. They're having so much fun making up their own facts in their own little world, that they've lost their grasp on reality. They're so accustomed now to cynically lying and making up an alternate reality to satisfy their short term goals, that they're starting to apply this same technique to their own political strategy: "Screw the next generation of Republicans! Let's grab what we can take now!! Only hand-wringing RINO 'moderates' believe that chump-voters (whom believe our BS) are a limited resource!!"