The Godawful Bill at the Center of the Gun Sit-In
In the end, the Republicans cut and ran. Or they realized there was no point in being shouted down. If you’ve come away from this week’s events in Congress with something like certitude, you probably began the day that way. For everyone else, being ambivalent feels like the natural result of being witness.
In response to America’s umpteenth mass shooting tragedy, House Democrats, led by Georgia Rep. John Lewis, initiated a sit-in Wednesday, demanding the Republican-controlled House vote on two gun-control bills. Ordinarily, pairing the words “sit-in” and “John Lewis” conjures images of pretty stark political clarity, but there are limits to how much the past can ennoble the present, especially one this compromised.
Just before noon Wednesday, when it became clear that Democratic representatives planned to stay seated on the floor for the foreseeable future, House Speaker Paul Ryan recessed the House and ordered the C-SPAN cameras turned off. Members of the sit-in responded by Periscoping their speeches, violating House rules against videotaping proceedings. They chanted, “No bill, no break!” They sang “We Shall Overcome.” When Ryan returned that evening to call things back to order, he was drowned out. Eventually, after 2 a.m., he and the rest of the Republican House took their balls and went home.
Fainting at violations of congressional tradition is a stuffed-shirt’s game. At peak efficiency, Congress is designed to impede change and make a virtue of the status quo. Besides, conservatives have practically branded government disruption, from refusing to vote on nominees for positions as radical as surgeon general, to vastly expanding the filibuster, to shutting the whole thing down to refuse to pay debts the government already contracted. So it’s hard to feel even a scintilla of sympathy, especially given the endless frustration of watching the Democrats play by the rules against opponents determined to break and bend as many as possible. And yet.
Everybody thinks heckling is hysterical when they do it. When MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked Steny Hoyer if he’d have countenanced this behavior from Republicans when he was House majority leader, he ducked the question, because he clearly wouldn’t have — and, in fact, he didn’t.
That goes double for those cheerleading at home or from the keyboard. If Republicans used the same tactics against a Democratic majority in defense of any issue, the outrage energy radiating out of the liberal blogosphere could light up Vegas for a thousand years.
The trouble with abandoning the rules because “it’s essential now,” or because “my side is right” is that every side believes this at every moment, with every issue. It’s the kind of reasoning that didn’t fool you when your parents pulled it on you when you were a kid. That’s why you need someone with the moral force of John Lewis to label moments like this “#goodtrouble.” (It will be interesting to see how much #goodtrouble members of the sit-in are interested in seeing on the floor during the Democratic National Convention and how many of them will be visiting a shuttered prison to support those who get into #goodtrouble outside.)
Even someone with as much lifetime moral credit as Lewis can’t efface what a mess the Democrats’ ultimate aim was here. One of the bills they chanted for contained increased background checks, but the other is the so-called “no fly, no buy” bill that seeks to ban suspected terrorists from buying guns. The proposed bill overwhelmingly dominated the rhetoric of the sit-in members, long and loud enough that you could forget that it wasn’t the only one being suggested.
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