World News Korner

Why the Religious Right is excited about 2014, and YOU should be encouraging everybody you know to get out and vote.

Courtesy of Salon:

Last week, the Senate voted 52-48 to eliminate the ability of the minority party in the Senate to filibuster executive branch nominees and any judgeship below the Supreme Court by changing the requirements for passage to a simple majority vote. It was a historic move made because there was no other alternative, given the GOP’s unprecedented abuse of the filibuster. In the history of the United States, 168 presidential nominees have been filibustered. Half occurred under all presidents from Washington through to Bush. Remarkably, the other half has taken place under just one president: Obama.

Why such aggressive judicial obstructionism by the GOP?

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes, “This era’s conservatives will use any means at their disposal to win control of the courts. Their goal is to do all they can to limit Congress’s ability to enact social reforms.”

The Christian Right, which is the GOP’s most reliable and agitated voting bloc, is obsessed with the courts, and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit is the nation’s second most important judicial body, which is why Republicans “gave the game away when all but a few of them opposed Obama’s three most recent appointments.”

Now that Democrats were forced into limiting the filibuster, the Christian Right has its incentive to mobilize for 2014. A simple majority control of the Senate gives it an opportunity to pack the courts with judges straight out of the Justice Scalia mold, who once said that separation of church and state would come under scrutiny under a Supreme Court with a Scalia majority. If the Christian Right sweeps Republicans to control the Senate in next year’s midterms, the anti-secularists will take a big step forward toward their stated ideological goals.

So is it possible that the Right Wing lured Harry Reid and the Democrats into a trap?

Well if they did it is only a trap that works if the progressives turn out in the low numbers that are traditional for us in non-Presidential election cycles.

They are essentially counting on the fact that due to the Edward Snowden revelations, the Healthcare.gov glitches, and the usual mid-term election malaise that we will be uninspired, unmotivated, and uninterested in going to the polls.

Well I say screw them! I think we WILL turn out in big numbers and fight to hold onto we have, and even push to gain more.

We know we can do it, the demographic numbers are on our side, the energy is on our side, and the ideas are on our side, so let's get fired up, and ready to go!

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