JASON: I tell you what, the intimidation goes on unabated. We are quickly moving from a republic — which is nothing more than a filtered majority — a filtered majority refined with representation and constrained by the separation of powers. That’s pretty fancy lingo for a guy that used to be in Congress, but here’s what it means. We want a majority to rule. You don’t want a minority.
That’s a monarchy. But you don’t want a mob to rule, so you put checks and balances in the way of the majority until they climb over each and every one to make certain we have a consensus and we actually, actually all agree that this is good policy. Make it tough for the government to act. That’s the essence of republicanism, small R.
What are the Democrats doing? They’re tearing down every single check to government power to the mob. They’re encouraging the mob in Minnesota. They’re taking away… They want to threaten to pack the Supreme Court with this commission. They’re undoing the filibuster, for crying out loud. Rush explained the nuclear option not that long ago. Audio number 5.
RUSH: Maybe I should take time to explain and define what the nuclear option is. It gets thrown around. Mr. Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option the rule is in the Senate you needed 60 votes to do anything. That rule goes back a long time. It’s not an original Senate rule. It was added to the Senate after the founding of the country. But it’s been around for decades. It’s been accepted by both parties.
The Senate compared to the House is where things are supposed to slow down, by design, the Founding Fathers’ design. The Founding Fathers were hell-bent to stop government action. The Constitution limited government, and that’s why people like Obama and Democrats call it a charter of negative liberties, because it limits government, is an anti-government, pro-citizen document.
The founders wanted to make it hard. Gridlock was part of the design. The founders wanted to make it hard for laws to be passed. They wanted to make it hard for there to be restrictions on the freedom of the people. The House was set up as the direct representatives of the people, not direct democracy, but many more of them per district and in toto. They served for two-year terms.
The Senate was the equivalent of an aristocracy at the beginning. Senators were not even elected. They were appointed in the early days. Then that changed, and senators did become elected. But the Senate is designed to slow down out-of-control, madcap activity elsewhere in the legislative branch, i.e., in the House. And the 60-vote rule was part of that. You have a hundred senators.
But for anything to happen, you need 60, which makes it really hard for anything to happen. Well, the Democrats, under Obama, never had 60 votes. For cabinet nominees you need 60. For judicial nominees you need 60, until Harry Reid came along in 2013 and blew up the 60-vote rule. And this is called the nuclear option. And Harry Reid decreed, because he ran the Senate…
As Senate majority leader, he ran it, and he was able to ramrod rules changes through. So beginning in 2013, 60 votes were no longer needed to affirm presidential appointments, nominations, or judges for every court except the Supreme Court. All you needed was 51 votes. At any rate… Look, I just wanted to get that explained so when you hear nuclear option, no question what it is now.
JASON: And Rush, of course, is right again. He explained the difference there between majority rule and mob rule. So now we’ve got no filibuster for judges, including the Supreme Court. There’s one left: Legislation. That’s what the Democrats want to undo, so they can then pack the Supreme Court, and those checks and balances will be a thing of the past for the mob.