MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who worked as a Senate staffer for years and has an abiding love for the institution of the Senate, didn’t hold anything back in tearing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema a new one for her performance politics speech defending the Senate filibuster rule.
Rush transcript (excerpt):
“I have never, never, heard a more contemptuous speech by a Democratic senator than the one written by Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate staff and read by Senator Sinema on the Senate floor today. The speech was filled with contempt for Senator Sinema’s Democratic colleagues, and her constituents, and for all of you.
Senator Sinema expresed that contempt by delivering a nonstop insult to the intelligence of everyone who was listening. She filled her 20 minutes on the Senate floor with a string of Hallmark greeting card like platitudes about how the United States Senate should work, and not a single word about the reality of why the United States Senate no longer works.
In announcing her opposition to changing Senate rules in any way in order to pass voting rights legislation by a simple majority vote, Senator Sinema said this:
“Eliminating the 60 vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come. “
It is hard to think of a stuider thing that could be said about the 60 vote threshold. That was Senator Sinema claiming that the 60 vote rule in the Seante is, quote, “a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy.“
It is, in fact, the single most anti-democracy rule that exists in American government. If Senator Sinema said a single true thing about the 60 vote rule today I would push the play button forthat right now, and let you har it. She didn’t. NOT ONE TRUE WORD about the 60 vote rule.
So here is something untrue that Senator Sinea said about her own history with the 60 vote threshold:
“There’s no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60 vote threshold to pass legislation. There’s no need for me to restate its role in protecting our country from wild reversals in federal policy.”
Quoting Sinema: ” My longstanding support for the 60 vote threshold to pass legislation.” (Look of disgust).
Here is Kyrsten Sinema in 2010 discussing the 60 vote threshold while she mocks a Democrstic senator for being insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party.” [Irony is dead.]
Sinema lied today when she claimed she has always been a supporter of the 60 vote threshold. https://t.co/e7fFRxchdB
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) January 13, 2022
One of the differences about that speech is that no one wrote that for her. She wsn’t reading that. So maybe, maybe, that means that’s what she actually thought. That version of Kyrsten Sinema before she came to Washington, wanted to use the simple majority vote in the United States Senate “for good instead of evil.”
She said that the Republicans never got 60 votes. She didn’t say that as a complaint, she said that admiring the Republican tactical ability to pass legislation without having to get 60 votes.
We cannot know what Kyrsten Sinema actually believes, or if she actually believes anything at all. But we do know that she did not support her position today with logic, intellgence or truth.
Senator Sinema did tell us how she feels about the unanimous opposition to voting rights legislation by every Republican in the United States Senate:
“I share the disappointment of many that we have not found more support on the other side of the aisle for legislativeresposes to state level voting restrictions. I wish that were not the case.“
“Disappointed.” She’s disappointed in the Republicans. When Kyrsten Sinema ran for the United States Senate she did not say that she would bring all of her legislative and policy goals in the United States Seante to the Republcian leader of the Senate and try to gt Republcian approval [permission] of her agenda. That’s not what she told Arizona voters. But that is her position now. Republicans have to approve everything Kyrsten Sinema wants to do or she won’t even try to do it. She will just stand at her desk in th United States Senate and be “disapointed.” And she will give up if Republcians don’t want to do what she wants to do. She will give up. That’s what she is saying today.
Presient Joe Biden today said he is not giving up. Prsident Biden attended the Democratic Senator’s lucheon today, where it is reported that Kyrsten Sinema sat looking at her phone for most of the time. [Capping off a day of contemptuous behavior].
Senator Sinema’s speech on the Senate floor before the luncheon did not dissuade Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) fron delivering a passionate talk during that luch about changing Seante rules, and that speech received standing ovation in that room.
I assume that Kyrsten Sinema remained seated, or had already left the room.
Laughter helps keep one’s sanity, crying only deepens the sorrow.
With apologies to Fred Rogers: And now boys and girls I want you to go in the kitchen and call your mother a Sinema. Did she slap you? Sure she did…I knew she would!
This was intended as a reply to Liza, don’t know why it was kicked to the top of the thread.
“I want you to go in the kitchen and call your mother a Sinema. Did she slap you?”
Ha ha. Laugh at her or cry, that’s our choice.
Regarding the Arizona Betrayer in the US Senate, the incomparable Charles Pierce gets it. Last two paragraphs:
“This dreamy flight from reality is the culmination of everything one faction of the Democratic Party has been about ever since Ronald Reagan got elected in 1980. It is cut from the same weak pastel cloth as Bill Clinton’s assertion that the era of big government was over, and his attempt to middle issues like criminal justice and the social-safety net. It is from the same spun-sugar universe that brought us the Simpson-Bowles fiasco and the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, the latter of which represented an assumption of good-faith in the political opposition that history has proven to be laughably mistaken.
Sinema was not speaking entirely out of personal ambition or stubborn eccentricity, or even from the interests of her donor class. She was speaking for an actual political constituency. There always has been a constituency in her political party that believes profoundly in a Republican Party and a political order that no longer exists. It is a constituency of hope over reality, of nostalgia for a time that really doesn’t deserve it, an appeal not far removed from the current efforts to launder the teaching of American history until it’s smooth and edgeless and easy to travel. Kyrsten Sinema called for American exceptionalism at a time in which the country is far from exceptional, but is, really, struggling to survive, not against “divisions” but against an attack on its fundamental character as real as Bull Run was, and as democratically heretical as anything that ever occurred to John C. Calhoun.”
And how he gets to that conclusion: https://link.esquire.com/view/5bda03a47e555430683e8dbdfpbno.ebv/d68ff286
“Kyrsten Sinema called for American exceptionalism at a time in which the country is far from exceptional…”
Kyrsten Sinema’s speech writer called for American exceptionalism which is nothing more than re-using worn out rhetoric as an excuse for Sinema’s betrayal of her constituents and her allegiance to the opposition because they pay better.
It’s a good article but Charles Pierce actually gives her too much credit, credit for maybe believing in something other than her inflated, pretentious image of herself and all the money she make from it. He hasn’t known her as long as we have.
Sinema is completely and thoroughly corrupted. Her positions and her reasons and the speeches she reads are just garbage. And I wouldn’t hold out any hope that she will budge an inch.
Less “nuts” and more “self-centered “, IMO.7
Who is the primary challenger to whom we need to send contributions? I voted for her and had hope. She is nuts.
I had the same reaction as Lawrence O’Donnell. Kyrsten Sinema read her speech full of lies and propaganda with condescension and contempt. Was that her attempt at passion and fury and fire? With all that higher education you would think she would have had a class in public speaking. Her performance was sickening and disrespectful, a perfect example of how NOT to talk to people.
Being a traitor is an ugly job.
Some of us didn’t trust Sinema to begin with and complained loudly about her for years.
That’s not intended as a “told you so” to anyone, it just means that her actions and attitude are nothing new.
She knows her excuses are BS, but she also knows most conservatives don’t think things through, and those are the folks she’s targeting.
She’s not a “public servant”, she’s a calculating, lying scam artist running a con on Arizona and hurting America for her own self enrichment.
What I can’t figure out is why would the solution to the divisiveness we are experiencing be perpetuating the system in place when the divisiveness developed.