FOX News. Health insurance companies. Is the U.S. Senate the next target of ire? Rich Lowery says it will be. Why? The Senate is designed to slow down and deliberate on legislation that has zipped through the more emotional House. If it does that on Pelosi-Obamacare…
The anti-senatorial campaign is already revving up. Liberal columnist Harold Meyerson stamped his feet in frustration yesterday in the Washington Post at the cussed balkiness of the Senate: “Dithering Heights.” “Proceeds glacially and produces next to nothing.”
This amounts to raging at the Senate for its very nature and purpose. It’s supposed to be slow-paced and unproductive. Everyone has their moments of frustration at the Senate (I’ve had plenty) because it is designed to be frustrating, especially when a majority in the House is electric with ideological excitement. Conservatives spent most of 1995 hurling epithets at the Senate.
So it’s not surprising that the Left is upset at it at a time when “Iron Nancy” is using her solid majority to muscle massive pieces of legislation through the House by a handful of votes. Why can’t the Senate do the same, goes the cry, entirely missing the point. It’s not just that the Senate is built differently from the House: It won’t truly be fulfilling its role in our constitutional scheme if doesn’t deep-six Obamacare.
The Senate exists to keep temporarily enlarged and inflamed majorities from rushing through far-reaching pieces of legislation that don’t command broad and deep public support. In its institutional DNA, the Senate should regard Obamacare the way a cheetah regards a gazelle — prey to be killed.