Background Check Filibuster Fakeout?

A different spin on the so-called “failed filibuster” attempt by some GOP lawmakers.

The concept of requiring background checks in order to purchase a firearm is seen largely as “reasonable” according to recent polls. According to a CNN poll, more than 90% of Americans approve of background checks for gun purchases. The Huffington Post, Politico, Yahoo! News and other media outlets have cited similar polls with similar results. It makes no difference that the poll questions and subjects were skewed to produce a left-leaning result. The poll is out there. The rest of the media jumped on it, and the gun control advocates are having a field day.

Surely, the GOP is smart enough to watch the polls and the resulting media frenzy. Perhaps they decided another filibuster spectacle wasn’t necessary, or worse, would bring harsher media attention to the divided party in the contentious gun control debate.

President Obama, and the many special interest groups that support him, have set to action their incredible marketing machine in the last several months, brilliantly exploiting the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary School to forward a gun control agenda that rivals Stalin or Mao. Traveling the country to share his message, and to support state legislatures, like those in Colorado and New York, the president has helped push bans on firearms, stricter background checks, and heavy restrictions on who can and cannot be permitted to own a firearm. Shockingly, the gun-grabbing left has all but won the war on America’s historical, cultural, and Constitutional relationship with firearms.

In the weeks following the massacre in Connecticut, crawling out of the D.C. woodwork were thousands of pre-written pages of legislation just waiting for their chance to be passed in powerful congressional committees. Like frantic locusts awakened from their dormancy, the anti-gun crowd swarmed the capitols of every state and took over the conversation in D.C. without haste. Committee after committee heard testimony and tear-jerking stories of how guns (not the people who use them illegally) destroy lives. The cable news media scrambled daily to air any emotional gun story they could find to make their case. State legislatures passed gun control bills in early 2013, even though prior to December 2012, no gun control legislation was being considered. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) anti-Second Amendment gun confiscation and limitation bill failed to reach a floor vote in the Senate, but the background check debate rages on. Why?

It has long been the modus operandi of the progressive left to throw out extreme ideas, thousands of pages of nonsense in bills, gin up the media, play to emotions of the left and right, and get everyone all “wee-wee’d up” for the express purpose of passing something “more reasonable,” thus gaining what they really wanted in the first place: more control.

Read that again. They are playing you.

Just as we have seen with budget battles, payroll tax holidays, and countless pieces of legislation in the past 4 years, the progressives have invoked countless conversations about extreme and controlling ideas, only to pass bills that are far more “reasonable.” And we play along saying, “It could have been so much worse!”

The failed attempt at a filibuster is just the latest case of Republicans caving to progressive ideas in a long list of disappointments for some party faithful and Tea Party types. This time, though, it may be more than simply caving to progressive ideals. It could have been a fakeout.

Had Senator Rand Paul successfully organized a filibuster on the background check vote, an issue that supposedly has 90+% approval, what would the media fall out have been? Think of the names Paul, Rubio and the rest would have been called by progressives. Wacko-bird is just the beginning of the progressive backlash on Paul. Think of the approval ratings plummeting for any who supported the filibuster attempt. Most likely the case is that the Republican caucus discussed the poll, the media frenzy, the 2014 & 2016 campaign implications, and the public perception of the filibuster, and determined it wasn’t going to help the GOP in the long run. They chose the 16 senators to “cave,” saved the embarrassment of a filibuster aftermath; thus saving face (and approval numbers) for presidential hopefuls Rubio and Paul in 2016.

This entire chain of events could have been avoided, though, if the GOP could figure out how to articulate the message that the Constitution has allowed America to experience more prosperity, more health, and more freedom than any other country in the history of the world. The GOP should listen to what Senator Paul has to say and learn from him. He articulates the message of personal freedom better than any in D.C. at the moment, as he brilliantly displayed at Howard University recently. Until the concept of liberty permeates the American culture, we will continue to see this charade coming from D.C.

To read about NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s nefarious influence on gun control proposals in several state legislatures, click here: Bloomberg Lobbyist

To read about gun control in Minnesota, click here: MN Gun Control

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