Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Democrats are faced with a choice. Protect the filibuster or protect democracy.
There’s no chance of compromise with this Republican Party.
The Democrats can use their House and Senate majorities to reform our politics, guarantee voting rights and enhance our democracy. Or they can surrender to an anti-majoritarian, money-dominated system, and allow the more accessible approach to voting created during the coronavirus pandemic to be destroyed.
This means that the party must recognize that the Senate filibuster, contrary to happy myth, does not promote bipartisanship or constructive compromise by requiring most bills to get 60 votes. No, in the face of a radicalized Republican Party, maintaining the current filibuster rules means abandoning any aspirations to a legacy of genuine achievement.
Sorry, there is no third way here. Yes, Democrats could avoid a complete repeal of the filibuster by getting rid of it only for certain categories of bills — for example, those related to voting rights and democratic reforms. But living with the status quo means capitulating to obstruction. Democrats have only 50 votes plus Vice President Harris’s tie-breaker. They will never get 10 votes from a GOP that can’t even find a way to exile white-supremacist extremists from its ranks.
So let the inevitable battle be waged in memory of John Lewis and John McCain, the civil rights icon and the Teddy Roosevelt reformer. Let it be a fight for democracy itself.
Jennifer Rubin: Republicans should police their own. Then we can talk about unity.
The inmates are running the party.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who pushed the Big Lie that the election was stolen and voted to overturn the results, met with Donald Trump on Thursday even though the discredited ex-president incited a violent insurgency that left five people dead and scores more wounded. That is the leader of the House Republicans. That is the Republican Party of 2021. [..]
Let me suggest the real problem is the 211 Republican members in the House who voted not to impeach Trump, the 45 who signed on to Paul’s resolution in the Senate and the supermajority of the base that prefer rule of an authoritarian wannabe to democracy. The base demands this lunacy and the spineless politicians who dish it out.
I offer three suggestions. First, Democrats need to make the Trump-hugging McCarthy and the loony Greene the faces of the Republican Party. That’s not even a stretch; they are the essence of the MAGA party. If that is what voters in swing or even Republican-leaning states want, they should have no doubts about what they are supporting. Second, a nationwide voter registration effort may help organic movements we have seen in Arizona, for example, where some 10,000 Republicans changed parties. Third, Democrats should keep in mind how Stacey Abrams flipped a red state: Painstaking organizing work. They need to duplicate that effort in states such as North Carolina and Ohio (which will have open Senate seats in 2022). They need more Democratic voters to get more Democrats in Congress.
There is no unity with anti-democratic conspiracy-mongers and those who welcome white nationalists into their fold. Forget unity. Save democracy. Then we can talk about unity.
Amanda Marcotte: Media tries to “both sides” an insurrection: No, anger over the Capitol riot isn’t “partisan rancor”
The Washington Post ran a “both sides do it” headline — but only the GOP is tacitly supporting Trump’s failed coup
The endless mainstream media urge to cast any and every partisan conflict in “both sides do it” terms — no matter how one-sided any conflict actually is — hit a shocking new low on Friday morning when the Washington Post ran this front-page headline: “Congress hits new levels of partisan rancor.” [..]
The story itself, written by Colby Itkowitz and Mike DeBonis, largely avoids the both-siderism of the headlines. The opening paragraph does describe “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leveling an extraordinary allegation that dangers lurk among the membership itself,” but Itkowitz and DeBonis swiftly demonstrate that Pelosi’s concerns are justified.
“The enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about, in addition to what is happening outside,” Pelosi warned Thursday morning.
She is right, and not just because of a few boldly conspiratorial Republican congressional members — like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who have fantasized about killing Democrats and who demanded the right to display weapons around colleagues whose lives were imperiled by violent Trump supporters, respectively. She’s right, as Itkowitz and DeBonis show, because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is embracing the insurrectionist wing of the GOP, and proudly working with Trump, who was impeached for inciting the mob.
That is the real story here: Instead of shunning Trump and his fellow travelers for stoking an insurrection, congressional Republican leadership is supporting and encouraging the very people who are most responsible for the attempted overthrow of the government.
Jill Filipovic: Republicans are going all-out to limit voting rights. We know why
n 2021 legislative sessions, lawmakers in 28 states have pushed a whopping 106 bills that would restrict voting access
It’s been less than a month since rightwing insurrectionists stormed the Capitol building in a deadly riot incited by the former president and his false claims of mass voter fraud. In the riot’s wake, many prominent Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the attackers and those who spurred them on. “The mob was fed lies,” said the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
Those “other powerful people” were powerful members of the Republican party and leading voices in conservative media, who are now either claiming we simply need to move on for the sake of healing, or saying that actually, the riot was the left’s fault. But while some Republicans are positioning themselves as honest and reasonable by condemning the riot and recognizing that it was sparked by lies about voter fraud, their party’s actions and policy priorities tell a very different story. Because as our nation remains rocked by an attack on the heart of our democracy, Republicans are using the same baseless lies that fueled it to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights.
Robert Reich: Why Republicans won’t agree to Biden’s big plans and why he should ignore them
The new president can achieve huge and vital reform and relief without the party of Trump – and they know it
If there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.
Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.
But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?
Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.
Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.
Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.
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