Really, who didn’t see this coming?
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday he may further lower the threshold required to bring bills to the Senate floor if Republicans lose one or two seats in November.
Patrick made the comment at a conservative policy conference in Austin while discussing the current makeup of the upper chamber, which has 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. Currently, 19 votes are required to put legislation on the floor for passage. But Republicans are facing the real possibility of losing at least one caucus member in 2020. Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton, is running for reelection in a solidly Democratic district after winning his seat in 2018 special election upset.
“I’m right there at that number, and if we lose one or two seats, then we might have to go to 16 next session,” Patrick said. “We might have to go to a simple majority because we will not be stopped in leading on federalism in the United States of America.”
Honestly, this is good news and we should be thankful for it. For one, this is the closest thing any Republican will come to admitting in public that they expect to lose SD19, a seat that they had the very good fortune to borrow for the 2019 session. There’s no reason Dan Patrick would voluntarily say this out loud to people who might report on it otherwise. He’s laying the groundwork. But look, while the two-thirds-that-is-now-three-fifths rule had its place in an older time, when the parties were less sorted by ideology and that rule wasn’t generally used for partisan reasons, it’s an anti-majoritarian abomination that just has no place in a democracy. Just look at the devastation that the filibuster wrought in the US Senate during the Obama presidency. You can’t be in favor of killing the filibuster and preserving the 2/3-3/5 rule. At least, I can’t.
Sure, in the short term, if Dems don’t take the House this year, losing the 3/5 rule will suck. Patrick and his cronies will get another session to shove through all the ridiculous wingnut crap they can, and may get to keep doing it even longer given that they’d be in control of redistricting. But someday, maybe even someday in the 20’s, the Dems are going to retake the Senate. Maybe it’ll happen in 2022, when all of the Senate is on the ballot, and maybe it’ll happen in conjunction with Dems winning statewide and keeping the House. Now ask yourself, in a Senate where Dems have 16 or 17 members: Do you want to let Senate Republicans control that chamber’s agenda by blocking every single bill the House passes that they don’t like? Or would you rather let those 16 or 17 Dem Senators do the job they were elected to do?
The brilliant thing is that when the Democratic Lieutenant Governor announces the Senate rules, which do not include a 2/3 or 3/5 rule, no one can cry about the vicious partisanship of it all, because Dan Patrick will have already set the precedent. He’ll get to have it first, but we’ll get it next, and we won’t have to do any work to make it happen. If you don’t see that as a golden opportunity, even if it is one whose timeline is unknown, I don’t know what to tell you.
Maybe it’ll happen in 2022, when all of the Senate is on the ballot, and maybe it’ll happen in conjunction with Dems winning statewide and keeping the House.
The Democrats are likely to win SD 19 in 2020, and with the current map and a favorable year, they could pick up SDs 8, 9, and 17, which would give them 16 seats and the majority. Unfortunately, for Democrats to have a favorable year in 2022, Trump will probably have to be in the White House, and either a Republican controlled LRB or Legislature will have re-gerrymandered the 2022 map, which will shore up Angie Paxton and Kelly Hancock.
The brilliant thing is that when the Democratic Lieutenant Governor announces the Senate rules, which do not include a 2/3 or 3/5 rule, no one can cry about the vicious partisanship of it all, because Dan Patrick will have already set the precedent.
I’m too cynical to believe people won’t cry about the vicious partisanship. The Republican hacks have no problem contradicting themselves within the same interview, and the mainstream media loves to point out that both sides do it.
I would not mind it if Democrats take over the Senate, keep the house, and Trump wins. They can impeach the Idiot in Chief, again and this time find all the crimes he has committed so he can spend the rest of his days behind bars, if they add most of his family it would be even better.
It requires 67 votes in the Senate to remove a president from office, and even in the extremely unlikely event that would happen, we would be left with President Pence, who could pardon Trump if he happened to have committed crimes that gave him jail time.
Don’t want him impeached, I want all his crimes to come out, put him behind bars, as his cult followers say “Lock Him Up”.
the rampant partisanship of today is an argument *for* these supermajority requirements, not against. were the seats split more close to even – as are the voters – then supermajority requirements would do their job to prevent the wingnut stuff from getting any traction.
the problem at the national level is the shift to the procedural filibuster, and the composition of the senate itself, not the filibuster. and the problem in texas is both partisan redistricting and that texans are so woefully ignorant that they will give a supermajority to crazypeople.
these are two completely different sets of problems. just because they happen to both involve supermajority requirements doesn’t mean they should be solved the same way.
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