Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor before yesterday’s debt ceiling vote caused an outpouring of fake outrage and badly bruised feelings among Senate Republicans … because he did not speak nicely about them in the speech.
The speech from Schumer came after 11 GOP senators joined with all Democrats to end debate on the short-term debt ceiling increase bill. Eventually, the bill was passed on a party-line 50-48 vote, to raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion through December 3.
Schumer pointed out some inconvenient truths about how republicans are sabotaging the economy and holding the country hostage by using the filibuster power to refuse raising the debt ceiling on the debt they created. He bluntly accused them of playing a "dangerous and risky partisan game" and saying Democrats were able to "pull our country back from the cliff's edge that Republicans tried to push us over.”
He added — "For the good of America's families, for the good of our economy, Republicans must recognize in the future that they should approach fixing the debt limit in a bipartisan way. We hope Republicans will join in enacting a long-term solution to the debt limit in December. We're ready to work with them."
That promptly led to Senate republicans pulling out the I-am-hurt play from the GOP playbook. From thehill.com/… —
Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.), one of 11 GOP senators who voted to end debate on the debt bill, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) both approached Schumer on the floor after his speech.
Thune said he told Schumer that he was frustrated with the tone of the Democratic leader's speech — "I thought it was totally out of line. I just thought it was an incredibly partisan speech after we had just helped him solve a problem. ... I let him have it."
Romney told reporters that "there’s a time to be graceful and there’s a time to be combative, and that was a time for grace."
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he "heard a number of people" on the Senate floor calling Schumer's speech counterproductive. And Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said Schumer's remarks were "unnecessarily partisan."
Sen. Mike Rounds (S.D.), another GOP "yes" vote on the procedural hurdle, told CNN that he thought the comments from Schumer were a "classless speech."
Et tu Manchin? He chimed in, siding with his republican colleagues — “I didn't think it was appropriate at this time, and we had a talk about that. I'm sure Chuck's frustration was up, but that was not a way of taking it out."
Cry me a river of crocodile tears, these are fake snowflakes, all of them! Perhaps, Senate Democrats should set up a box for tissue donations in the Capitol rotunda.
Here is the speech that republicans pounced upon to make their juvenile points of outrage and to preemptively justify their next act of obstruction and hostage-taking -
Romney was outraged by the speech, so he claims -
Did Romney vote to end the filibuster? No. But he wants a pat on the back nevertheless and perhaps an M&M cookie.
The reactions from the civilized world is as expected — head-shaking truths sprinkled with some biting humor and irony —
DNC Chair with some apt descriptions of today’s republican party.
Damn right — they just need lame excuses to satisfy their rotten core base -
Calling out fascist Romney and his phony tears -
Gaslighting is what they do and all they do -
It is time for the beltway media to focus on the real issues and the real villains in Congress -
For anyone complaining about Schumer’s words, read any speech that McConnell gives on the Senate floor or even the tweet he tweeted to announce the debt ceiling “concession” — they are all laced with poisonous words and juvenile insults against Democrats. There is never one word of reconciliation or awareness of their hypocrisy or their dastardly role in creating crisis after crisis for the country. Not one word of respect for members of the Democratic party every slips off that forked-tongue. Perhaps Manchin should save some of his lectures on civility for McConnell.
This whole thing also looks like a cynical move by tricky McConnell to force Democrats to use up the reconciliation card on the debt ceiling issue instead of their advancing their economic agenda. Democrats are not biting.
Here is Chuck Schumer speaking in plain English on his twitter site about what happened, which party is working for the People and which party swings the wrecking ball.
Maybe this is all an attempt to divert attention away from McConnell, who is getting hammered from all sides.
Maybe, all this posturing is to please trump and the republican base, whose members terrorize the nation with their lawlessness but cry buckets of tears when someone says something truthful about them.
Republicans will continue to play dangerous games and do everything possible to wreck Biden’s agenda. Expect the right-wing noise machine to keep bleating their talking-points on the subject. It does not have to make any sense, since their base expects none. They want to create chaos. They think they can win the Senate and the House in 2022 with chaos assisted by voter suppression.
We can expect more hostage-taking on this issue around Christmas.
What should Democrats do next on the debt ceiling issue? What about the infrastructure bill? And filibuster “reform”? Voting rights? What should our strategy and messaging be? How do we succeed with two Democratic Senators pulling for the other side?