The filibuster is sometimes seen as a Southern tradition that grew out of opposition to civil rights. It’s true that for decades after Reconstruction, Democrats used filibusters to block Republican legislation, most famously during fights over civil rights laws. But it wasn’t always so polarized. The first filibuster was conducted by Massachusetts Senator Samuel Chase in 1803, on behalf of his Federalist colleagues who were trying to prevent Thomas Jefferson from appointing justices sympathetic to Democratic-Republican causes.
Jefferson didn’t have a supermajority in Congress—and was too proud to bribe legislators to get one—so he had Vice President Aaron Burr call senators into session continuously for six weeks until they ran out of things to talk about and let him appoint a judge he wanted. Filibustering later became routine, and there were very few sessions where at least one senator didn’t try to hold up proceedings with long speeches. Senators generally weren’t paid well; many relied on patronage jobs or ownership of farms and businesses back home.
So if you lived far away from Washington, speaking was actually a lucrative way to supplement your income. You could even include proposals as part of your speech: Northern Republicans once held upvotes for money for Louisiana Purchase territories because they suspected Andrew Jackson would use those areas as pawns in his foreign policy game, historian Jeremy Dimmick writes in Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate.
Making tactical considerations like these meant cutting off debate was uncommon in the early days of the American government. There are only nine known cases in which votes to close debate failed when put to an official vote prior to 1909, according to Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones’s 2005 book, The United States Senate: A Glorious Bipartisan Failure. When they did happen, however, parties usually worked together on an agreement beforehand — rather than forcing all 100 members of Congress to be present for hours upon hours while individual senators spoke without stopping. You couldn’t do anything else, Michael Schaffer writes in his 2012 book Filibusterer, noting that early efforts tended toward political jockeying more than anything truly substantive.
If Biden gets rid of the filibuster, then socialism is another step closer. I happen to know for a fact, that Democrats will stop at nothing to take over. It’s what the party dreams of. Having absolute power no one can stop them from taking the country into communism. They will try everything they can to get their agenda pushed through before the midterm elections come. They know they are going to lose power so they are already setting their sights on a more socialist country if they keep power.
So as you can see why Republicans should fight it until we win. This is our last chance, if we don’t fight and hit back hard and hit hard now we may not be able to stop it again! We cannot let Democrats gain control of government ever again! Maybe sometime in 2024, we must retake control but right now we need to stop Biden and his democrats from getting any more votes that would help push forward further than he has done since 2020 because he has turned our great country upside down…
God Bless America, God Save The Veterans