In the years of Republican domination, the Democrats took a lot of crap for occasionally blocking or slowing down a Republican measure or two. The Carpetbagger Report has an entry entitled The ‘Grand Obstructionist Party’ which states that there have been 13 cloture votes in the first half of the first session of the Democratically controlled Senate. In comparison, during the last two years of the Republican controlled Senate there were a total of four.
For literally years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.
And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it.
Why hasn’t the Democratic Congress had greater success passing legislation in its first six months? Because 239 separate pieces of legislation have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation†that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor.