Harry Reid's Deal Allowed A Racist Filibuster To Stand. I Guess All Records For Democrats Are Fabu, Even If They Are Vile And Despicable

By Patrick Howley of The Daily Caller

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caused one of America’s most vile all-time records to remain standing Wednesday.

Sen. Ted Cruz yielded the floor shortly after noon Wednesday at the behest of Reid after a lengthy quasi-filibuster. The Texas Republican had reportedly negotiated an agreement with Reid beforehand that he would be able to speak until noon Wednesday but not hold an actual filibuster.

Cruz clearly remained energetic after speaking for more than 21 hours, suggesting that if Reid had not stopped the speech to hold the stopgap budget vote,  Cruz could easily have shattered the-then Strom Thurmond’s racist filibuster record.

The late South Carolina Sen. Thurmond holds the filibuster record at 24 hours, 18 minutes for a 1957 diatribe against civil rights legislation. Thanks to Reid, Thurmond’s reprehensible stemwinder will remain #1 in Senate record books.

“I ask my friend from Texas to, uh, yield to me, without losing his right to the floor, for a colloquy,” Reid told Cruz, who had been speaking for more than 21 hours.

“With the reservation that I do not lose the right to the floor” Cruz said he would yield to a colloquy.

“This is not a filibuster. This is an agreement that he and I made that he could talk,” Reid said in his subsequent remarks before Cruz yielded the floor.

Cruz was speaking to keep the budget resolution from coming to the Senate floor because it sets the stage for Reid to delete provisions defunding Obamacare.

Had Reid allowed Cruz to continue his quasi-filibuster past 24 hours, 18 minutes, the Senate could have given Cruz the record with an asterisk or something. But no, as it stands, Thurmond still holds the Senate record for his anti-civil rights filibuster. Thanks, Senator Reid.

The artificial limit on Cruz’s quasi-filibuster also means the record still belongs to the Democratic Party. Thurmond was a Democrat at the time of his racist filibuster.

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SoRo:

Ted Cruz's 'filibuster' lasted for 21 hours and 19 minutes.

Strom Thurmond's filibuster lasted 24 hours, 18 minutes.  

The difference?  2 hours and 59 minutes.

No vote or debate was scheduled.   So why couldn't read let Cruz precede and, in a bipartisan fashion, demolish a scourge on the history and records of the United States Senate - one that deserves no place of honour or memory?  A record-breaking racist diatribe could have been thrown upon the ash heap of history.

My takeaway:  Senator Harry Reid and his Progressive Partners on both sides of the aisle, along with the Washington-Manhattan Establishment, hate Senator Ted Cruz so much that they would rather let stand a 56-year-old hideous relic of a Jim Crow past:  One originating in the Democratic Party.  Evidently, they prefer a filibuster record set by a racist Democrat than one set by a minority, whose own family escaped tyranny in both the forms of the Batista Regime and the Castro Communist Era.

On 28 August 1957, Thurmond mounted his historic filibuster in an unsuccessful attempt to derail passage of the Eisenhower Civil Rights Act of 1957, which, to be fair, was opposed by the likes of Senator John F Kennedy, Senator James Fulbright, Senator Sam Ervin, Senator Richard Russell, Senator Russell Long, and Senator John Stennis.  He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes as a Democrat and proud segregationist.  While Thurmond later - much later - apologised, he didn't do so until he left the party of which he had been a member for 62 years; however, the filibuster record remains to this day:  

Senator Strom Thurmond (Democrat-South Carolina), 24 hours and 18 minutes, 28 August 1957, stands.  

 

Thank you, Harry Reid.

In other 'good' news:

A)  Second place remains: The 23 hours and 30 minute filibuster mounted by Senator Alphonse D'Amato (Democrat-New York) in 1986 to stall a military appropriations bill that cut funding for a warplane built by a company headquartered in his district remains in second place.  

B)  Third place remains with Senator Wayne Morse (Independent-OR), who spoke for 22 hours and 26 minutes, to stall debate on the Tidelands Oil bill on 24-25 April 1953.

C)  Ted Cruz's 26 September 2013 'filibuster' of 21 hours and 19 minutes on the subjects of defunding Obamacare, debt, and liberty did, however, dethrone an Early American Progressive Icon, Senator Robert La Follette, Sr, of Wisconsin.  La Follete had filibustered 18 hours and 23 minutes to block debate on the Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Bill, which allowed the Treasury to lend currency to banks during financial crises, whilst the 'fiery Progressive Senator' delivered a stem-winding oration championing the 'family farmers and the labouring poor.'  La Follette had given the fourth-longest filibuster in history until Senator Ted Cruz passed the 18 hour and 23 minute mark.

 

 

I guess letting go of a vile, despicable, deplorable, disdainful, racist piece of diatribic tripe has - presumably - earned its place in Senate and Democratic lore.  Perhaps, we shouldn't be surprised that the Senate Democrats would rather demonstrate their utter disdain for a man, who obviously did not receive the 'Dissent is Patriotic...only if you are a Democrat' notification, than they wanted to MemoryHole another one of their connections to slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.

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