They say that women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.
When you use the word 'filibuster,' most of us in America - and I count myself among them - envision it as the ability to hold the floor on rare occasions to speak at length and make your point emphatically and even delay progress by taking hours.
The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.
Every congresswoman surely endures the same strains that drive some of her male colleagues to have affairs: lots of travel, families far away, heady work that makes a domestic routine seem distant and boring. But the stakes are much higher for women, because they are still judged by a different standard.
The reality is is that Congress is a very male-gendered oriented institution. Out of the, you know, more than 10,000 people who've ever been elected to Congress, you know, only about 250 of them have ever been women.
There are two ways of looking at the talking filibuster. My way is as a form of unanimous consent.
My view of the filibuster is either you've got to lower vote edge or make people really filibuster if they feel that seriously about a piece of legislation.
Women politicians take their job seriously and accomplish their duties diligently and sensitively. Only they can understand the problems of women and act as a sounding board for their concerns.
No one ever built the filibuster rule. It just kind of was created.
My way of viewing the talking filibuster was as a way of doing unanimous consent with your feet. You object by going down and talking.