The Right Resistance: Senate parliamentarian busts through the GOP’s Maginot line (the filibuster)

Another day, another shocking revelation.

As revealed earlier this week, the real power in the land now lies with the Senate parliamentarian. Who, you ask? The Senate parliamentarian. Her name is Elizabeth MacDonough. Don’t feel shame if you’ve never heard of her, or even know what she does in her employment capacity. For all we know her position is one of those where you turn in a resume to the Senate employment office and then fudge your qualifications to get an offer.

Forget Nancy Pelosi, Charles “Chucky” Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You can even pass over broken down, mentally challenged dinosaur President Joe Biden, who doesn’t know the difference between Crow (Jim) and Eagle (Jim). Vice President Kamala Harris? Nah. She’s in charge of nothin’ and everythin’ at the same time.

Then there’s former President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a handful of conservatives in both chambers who would qualify as nationally recognized powerful people. Or how about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who’s not only doing a terrific job leading the Sunshine State, his policies are being defended by in-state Democrats against the hateful and spiteful national media (60 Minutes)?

They’re all just elected cogs in the overall machine. The law is laid down by Elizabeth MacDonough.

Americans should focus on the senate parliamentarian’s role and seemingly unlimited power, as MacDonough might’ve single-handedly solved the Democrats’ most vexing political conundrum, and in the process, given the okay for trillions in new spending by the socialistic Democrat upper chamber majority (we all know it’s a tie, 50-50, but having Harris in the impasse breaking role gives ambitious liberals all the supremacy they’ll need to blow open the Treasury’s doors).

Dave Boyer reported at The Washington Times:

“The Senate parliamentarian ruled on Monday that Democrats can use special budgetary rules to avoid Republican filibusters on two more pieces of legislation this year, potentially clearing the way for President Biden‘s multitrillion-dollar infrastructure proposal to pass in two packages with simple-majority votes.

“Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and his Democratic troops can pass Mr. Biden‘s $2.25 trillion package using the fiscal 2021 budget resolution. That means Democrats could push through the package if they don’t lose any of their 50 senators.

“A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said the ruling ‘allows Democrats additional tools to improve the lives of Americans if Republican obstruction continues.’ He said no decision has been made on a path forward, but called the ruling ‘an important step’ for Democrats to use ‘if needed.’”

Hmpf. How long will it take Democrats to find the “need” to play their newfound trump (pardon the pun) card? For if all of the climate change gobbledygook pork stuffed into Biden’s infrastructure proposals is any indication, any old tornado or rare weather event will supply the public relations impetus to act. Or how about this year’s annual round of wildfires in the west? We’re just a couple congressional recesses away from the hot, dry months in the problem states.

Democrats are already preparing the script: “We gotta act NOW before it’s too late! Twelve years -- oops, now it’s eleven -- until the planet melts and we all perish from exposure and the ‘existential threat’ of climate change! Hurry! Hurry! Get the deniers out of the way! We don’t even need senile Joe’s executive order pen any longer!”

In essence, “Chucky” Schumer and his merry band of free country transformers won’t expend any more energy worrying about nailing West Virginia stick-in-the-mud Senator Joe Manchin’s hindquarters to the wall until he relents on the filibuster, either. Nor will they have to tarnish the name of Arizona Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema for the same reason. Everyone knows liberal Democrats have no qualms with browbeating any and all Republicans (except maybe Mitt Romney) for any perceived slight, but they really don’t like flogging their own if another, less upsetting avenue exists.

Thanks to a procedural decision made by MacDonough, someone who’s not on a ballot or accountable to the voters in any way, they won’t have to!

We’ll now see whether Mitch McConnell carries through with his recent threat to deploy “scorched earth” tactics to slow or stop Democrat legislation sans the filibuster. This, according to the Kentuckian, would involve GOP senators refusing to give typical unanimous consent to the most mundane of motions, like adjourning for lunch or agreeing on the calendar.

This is bad.

If the senate parliamentarian truly was the last plug in the proverbial liberal dike, why didn’t Republicans just put more pressure on her before? Well, they did. But Democrats apparently found a better way. And while it’s easy to blame Elizabeth MacDonough for the sudden change in the senate’s status quo, there are other, more identifiable and useful scapegoats at hand for the real responsibility.

You want more Republicans? Win more elections. It's hard to say the words, but perhaps former President Donald Trump shoulders some of this blame? Trump was certainly justified to press his post-election claims of voter fraud and a rigged ballot count in places like Georgia and other states where the tallies smelled funny -- but he also didn’t do the Peach State’s two incumbent Republican senators any favors by focusing everyone’s attention on himself and his crusade rather than the all-important, majority-preserving run-off elections.

Remember, if the GOP had won just one of the two, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation today. “Chucky” Schumer would still be in his minority hole and complaining about how everything Republicans do is racist, etc. Oh wait, he does it anyway!

It would be really hard to pick off Republican votes to advance the tax raising, budget busting infrastructure legislation, much less vote for it. The republic would’ve been safe, at least for a little longer.

MacDonough’s ruling also means “Chucky” and the rest of the senate socialist leadership will steer the agenda away from anything deemed too attenuated from budget matters and only focus on things they can pass without brushing up against Sinema’s and Manchin’s “No, I won’t change my mind, EVER!” stance on the filibuster. Who needs it? When you can push through sixty percent of your aims without bloodying your pinky finger, why fight like cats n’ dogs for the controversial forty percent?

In WWII parlance, this scenario is akin to France’s Maginot line, which was constructed to keep the Nazis from ever pulling a WWI-style trench warfare frontal attack against Eastern France. The French dumped a major part of their postwar resources into the defensive project and rested comfortably behind it while Hitler invaded eastern Europe in late 1939. Well, the non-conventional German war machine simply invaded neutral Belgium to France’s north and completely bypassed the supposedly impregnable battlements.

The Germans went around it. France fell in a matter of weeks.

Republicans and Democrats alike relied on the filibuster to shelter them against the other party’s major legislative onslaughts. The ruthless and truth unconstrained Democrats didn’t settle for sitting behind their fortifications -- they just made everything about the budget, including tax increases, and the rest became more achievable, thanks to the senate parliamentarian. The classic “end around”!

The Republicans’ Maginot line is useless now, at least where the Democrats’ main thrust is aimed. The biggest loser is the American taxpayer and anyone else who values the constitutional legislative process, fiscal responsibility and limited government. Does this make the Democrats sound like the Nazis and the Republicans blood brothers to the WWII French? You decide.

• Senate parliamentarian

• Elizabeth MacDonough

• Chuck Schumer

• Filibuster

• Mitch McConnell

• Biden infrastructure plan

• climate change

• federal spending

• federal deficit

• national debt