Republican Obstruction Quotes

The Republican Party has used objection, obstruction, and filibustering not only to block the necessary processes of government but also in order to make ordinary Americans deeply cynical about Washington. Republicans perpetually run against government and come out on top. But, in the process, they are undermining the foundations of self-rule in a representative democracy.

Any nation allowing its people the right of freedom of speech is powerless to defend itself against enemies masquerading as patriotic; and seeking to obstruct, impede, break down, and destroy the proper functioning of its republican form of government under the guide of honest criticism

If Republicans care about the Constitution, they have to find the courage to say no or lose their constituencies and ultimately their cause. They have to say no to the anticonstitutional views of Supreme Court nominees such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor and to un-Constitutional executive orders by presidents like Barack Obama, and that means they have to be prepared to obstruct them by any constitutional means necessary. Nor should they be cowed by a corrupt anti-Republican press. No candidate was ever vilified more by the media than Donald Trump, and he won.

on. “No matter how obstructive the Republicans may be, Obama has the responsibility of leadership. I’m worried that he’s overplaying his hand in saying that it’s all the Republicans’ fault.

President Obama’s postpartisan pitch fell flat, and the Tea Party movement pulled the GOP further to its ideological pole. Republicans greeted the new president with a unified strategy of opposing, obstructing, discrediting, and nullifying every one of his important initiatives.

Republicans, as well as Democrats committed to our constitutional framework, should fearlessly marshal the administration’s frauds, obstructions, and violations of law. They should demand transparency and accountability for the lies, the broken oaths, the betrayal of the rule of law, and the damage wrought—including lives not only devastated but lost due to the administration’s recklessness.

at precisely four A.M. on Friday, June 28, the Republican Party, by acclamation, chose as its candidate the bigot who had denounced Jews over the airwaves to a national audience as “other peoples” employing their enormous “influence . . . to lead our country to destruction,” rather than truthfully acknowledging us to be a small minority of citizens vastly outnumbered by our Christian countrymen, by and large obstructed by religious prejudice from attaining public power, and surely no less loyal to the principles of American democracy than an admirer of Adolf Hitler.

The seeming power of a unified minority in Washington with just enough votes to thwart Obama was also a source of strength and, arguably, arrogance and self-importance. Even after Brown's election, the Democrats held 59 percent of the U.S. Senate, 59 percent of the House of Representatives, and 100 percent of the White House. But the GOP's forty-one Senate votes—representing, it must be noted, no more than 37 percent of the American public (thanks to Republican popularity in smaller states)—seemed paramount, because it offered just enough votes to kill any piece of legislation through the delaying tactic known as the filibuster. These representatives of 37 percent of the country wielded unprecedented powers because of something the likes of which this nation had never seen before: their ability to stick together on every single issue with the sole purpose of obstructing Barack Obama and his Democratic allies. It was an 'I Hope He Fails' strategy hatched in the ratings-driven studios of talk radio, but now rigid legislative fealty to the on-air musings of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck had ground Washington to a total halt.

Rather than compromising their principles and working with the new administration, DeMint argued, Republicans needed to take a firm stand against Obama, waging a campaign of massive resistance and obstruction, regardless of the 2008 election outcome.

GRIDLOCK. THAT WAS THE SHORTHAND REPORTERS USED. BUT IT wasn’t quite right. Gridlock is an accident, an inconvenience. What happened on Capitol Hill was a strategy, and its architect was Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s tactics were informed by a pair of brilliant, if somewhat evil, insights. The first was that Americans hold their president almost entirely responsible for the performance of the government as a whole. Under his direction, Republicans in Congress behaved like offensive linemen hoping to get their quarterback fired. They knew failing to do their jobs would make them look bad. But they also knew POTUS would take the hit. No matter who caused the loss, Obama’s name would wind up with an L beside it. McConnell’s second insight was that, if he was shameless enough for long enough, he would never get the comeuppance he deserved. Some political reporters slant left, others right, but what unites them is the desire to break new stories. Kick a puppy live on camera, and everyone will cover it. Kick a puppy per day, and steadfastly refuse to apologize, and within two weeks the press moves on. This is what happened, metaphorically at least, in the fall of 2011. Republicans voted in lockstep against funding for teachers, cops, firefighters, and laid-off construction workers. These were causes that once inspired compromise. Everyone was shocked to see lawmakers from either party oppose them. But the surprise wore off. With frightening speed, obstruction became the new normal. Reporters might as well have written about the sun rising in the east.

In May, more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations signed an open letter stating that Trump’s conduct as documented in Mueller’s report “would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

In a caste context, the two main political parties bear the advantages and burdens of the castes they most attract and with which they are associated. At times, the stigma and double standard attached to disfavored minorities have accrued to the Democrats, while the privilege and latitude accorded the dominant caste has accrued to the Republicans, who have come to be seen as proxies for white America. This in part explains the unforgiving scrutiny and obstructions faced by Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and before them John Kerry and Al Gore, as white support has intensified for Republicans, now seen as the party of an anxious but powerful dominant-caste electorate.

In response to his election, Republicans began changing election laws, making it harder to vote. They did so even more vigorously after the Supreme Court overturned a section of the Voting Rights Act, removing federal election oversight that the states, each with a history of obstructing the minority vote, said was no longer needed. Between 2014 and 2016, states deleted almost 16 million people from voter registration lists, purges that accelerated in the last years of the Obama administration, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. States enacted new voter ID laws even as they created more barriers to obtaining this newly required ID. Together, these actions had the cumulative effect of reducing voter participation of marginalized people and immigrants, both of whom were seen as more likely to vote Democrat.

It took Fitzgerald three years of litigation to get to a place where he charged, tried, and convicted Libby of making false statements in a federal investigation, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Republican loyalists howled that he was persecuting Libby because prosecutors could never prove the underlying crime—the intentional leaking of a covert agent’s name with prior knowledge of its illegality. Of course, these were the same Republicans who passionately believed that President Bill Clinton’s lies under oath over an affair with an intern simply had to be pursued, because obstruction of justice and perjury strike at the core of our system. Meanwhile, Democrats, who six years earlier attacked the case against Bill Clinton as a silly lie about sex, had discovered in the Libby case that they cared deeply about obstruction of justice crimes—when the obstructers were Republicans.

Despite everything the Republicans had done to try to thwart him, despite the many attempts to obstruct his presidency, his vision had prevailed. We’d asked Americans for permission to keep working—to finish strong—and now we’d gotten it. The relief was immediate. Are we good enough? Yes we are.