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WARREN: A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws.
STEVE DAINES: The senator is reminded that it is a violation of Rule 19 of the Standing Rules of the Senate to impute to another senator or senators any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming a senator.
WARREN: Mr. President, I don’t think I quite understand. I’m reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I’m simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant and what it would mean in history for her.
DAINES: This is a reminder, not necessarily what you just shared. However, you stated that a sitting senator is a disgrace to the Department of Justice.
RUSH: And so she’s just getting warmed up. This is the kind of stuff she loves. These Democrat hate groups, they love this kind of challenge, and so Fauxcahontas was just getting warmed up. What, by the way, the voice you heard there, that was Steve Daines. He’s a senator from Montana, and the poor guy, he drew the short straw last night in having to act as president of the Senate. He had to be traffic cop for all this, another Democrat all-nighter. They tried to destroy DeVos. Now they’re trying to destroy Sessions.
They’re not gonna succeed at this. This is an exercise here simply to feed the hate to their base, their victimized base, which has a steady diet of undiluted hate. The Democrats have to keep serving it if they have any chance of getting elected. So Mitch McConnell, as she kept going, McConnell stepped in, the Republican leader of the Senate had enough.
MCCONNELL: Mr. President.
DAINES: Majority leader.
MCCONNELL: The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama as worn by the chair. Senator Warren said, quote, “Senator Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” I call the senator to order under the provisions of Rule 19.
WARREN: Mr. President.
DAINES: Senator from Massachusetts.
WARREN: Mr. President, I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate. I ask leave of the Senate to continue my remarks.
DAINES: Is there objection?
MCCONNELL: I object.
DAINES: Objection is heard. The senator will take her seat.
WARREN: I appeal the ruling of the chair.
RUSH: And she just kept going, and she got hysterical and so forth. The reading of the letter from Coretta Scott King in 1986 was about the Sessions appointment to be a federal district court judge back in 1986 is not even applicable today. The whole thing here is rooted in the left trying to take a joke that Sessions told and turn it into a serious policy statement.
The left wants you to believe that Jeff Sessions was all cool with the KKK. He was fine with the KKK. They were great bunch of — until he found out they smoke marijuana, and when he found out they smoked marijuana, that’s when Jeff Sessions decided he had a distance himself from the KKK. He was telling a joke, I’m giving you it to you out of context. That one episode is what the Democrats have tried to build a case on that Sessions is pro-KKK, anti-black, anti-minority, racist and all. It’s bogus. It’s BS.
Many of the senators that voted against Sessions in ’86 have stated they wished they could do it again. They feel bad they voted against him. Everybody in the Senate knows the guy. It’s all made up. This is why McConnell stood up. It’s made up. It’s a bunch of lies. None of it is true. It’s impugning a senator. It is violation of Rule 19.
However, there is an interesting piece about this by a writer named Sean Davis over at The Federalist. In his opinion, this is related to the upcoming battle over Judge Gorsuch. And it’s rooted in the fact that McConnell and the Republicans would really love to get Gorsuch confirmed without having to invoke the filibuster, to nuke it. Which means they would like to be able to get 60 votes for Gorsuch. But Rule 19, you see, Rule 19 provides a route around the necessity for 60 votes without blowing up the filibuster. And here is the part of the Rule 19 that is relevant to this aspect of it.
“When a senator desires to speak, he shall rise and address the Presiding Officer, and shall not proceed until he is recognized, and the Presiding Officer shall recognize the senator who shall first address him. No senator shall interrupt another senator in debate without his consent, and to obtain such consent he shall first address the Presiding Officer, and no senator…” This is the key to it: “[N]o senator shall speak more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day without leave of the Senate, which shall be determined without debate.”
You heard her ask for leave in the Senate. That means, basically, suspension of rules, which was denied. So the key element of Rule 19 which shut her up might actually be a test for the use of Rule 19 in another area, and it is the area which prevents a senator from speaking more than twice about any one subject. So the upshot is that no senator can speak more than twice on any legislative day on the same subject. So if you’re talking about the debate on Gorsuch on the floor, on whether he should be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice…
So what McConnell could do here, because he’s the leader of the Senate, is he could simply deem that the floor debate on Gorsuch will occur in one legislative day. And he can do that if the Senate is not gaveled into recess. Which means that the debate would actually become a real filibuster. It means that every senator rising has to speak about the subject and can only speak about it twice, and the Senate can’t go into recess. So you have a legitimate filibuster. It’s just a filibuster where every senator can speak, not just one.
And since a senator can only speak twice about a single subject, the theory is that you could have the Senate legislative day comprise 48 hours and give every opponent to Gorsuch two different chances to say whatever they want to say about him. After everybody has had their opportunity to speak twice on the floor of the Senate, whether it’s at noon or midnight or whenever, they’re done. When every senator has had his chance to speak twice, it’s over. The legislative day is over.
Once that’s all done, there’s nobody remaining who can legally take the floor in order to continue the debate because every senator will have spoken twice about the nomination of Gorsuch. So at that point McConnell would say that the debate is over by rule and call for the final confirmation vote. There would not be a 60-vote cloture vote necessary, wouldn’t be a need for 60 votes, wouldn’t be a necessity for it. Because once that rule — the Rule 19 two-speech rule — has been applied to everybody who wishes to speak, the debate is over.
And then McConnell would schedule the final floor vote, and Gorsuch would sail in. It’s a little bit more involved than that because it’s all involved in shutting down the debate. The debate can’t go on because Rule 19 prevents any senator from saying anything more than twice on the same subject. So the invocation of Rule 19 calls it a legislative day, and the day goes on until every senator’s had a chance to speak twice. Well, the Republicans won’t speak twice, but Democrats will. For every Democrat speaking twice, whatever, take 48 hours, a legislative day, 48 hours.
And after that, there can’t be any more debate on the subject because Rule 19’s invocation prohibits any senator from speaking more than twice on a subject, and you have to have a vote after this. So it’s a way around. It’s obvious they do not want to have to use the filibuster to get Gorsuch confirmed, and some people looking at this think that the invocation of Rule 19 will be a way of getting that done, because you eliminate the need for 60 votes, ’cause the debate ends.
It’s 60 votes that ends the debate normally.
You’ve gotta have 60 votes for cloture.
But if you invoke Rule 19 and senators can only speak twice, then that’s it. Debate’s over. You don’t need 60 votes to stop the debate. Rule 19 has stopped the debate. Then you have the vote, and Gorsuch gets confirmed by 52, 53, what have you, whatever it is. That is the thinking. So while the left thinks that Elizabeth Warren scored a big knockout here by becoming the focus of Republican obstructionists and so forth, what’s really happening here is everybody has been prepared for Rule 19. People know what Rule 19 is now, and there’s another part of it, and it looks like it’s about to be used.
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