Kill Switch Quotes

“That some advantages might have resulted from such a precaution [of supermajority rule], cannot be denied,” he writes. “It might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures.” But then Madison proceeds to explain why “these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale.” If a minority was allowed to block a majority, he writes, then “in all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“For Calhoun, minority rights were a cloak for the interests of the wealthy, the powerful, and most of all, the white supremacist.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“The Framers were realists who wrote the Constitution in the shadow of the Articles of Confederation, the disastrously ineffective system of government that allowed a minority of members of Congress to block the majority from acting.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“To the Framers, a “republic” meant what we today call a democracy: a system where the people elect their representatives, who then write and vote on laws.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“As America faces enormous challenges, the Senate has become a kill switch that cuts off broad-based solutions and shuts down our democratic process.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“THE TOOL THAT white supremacist senators honed in the Jim Crow era to defy the majority is the filibuster, as we know it today.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Despite being synonymous with the Senate, the filibuster was nowhere in the Framers’ vision for the institution, and indeed is antithetical to it.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“A study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that under President Bill Clinton, unanimous judicial nominees—those who ended up having zero votes cast against their nomination—waited an average of 17 days to receive their confirmation votes. Under President George W. Bush, the wait was 29 days. Under President Obama, it was 125 days.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“All other presidents combined had endured a total of eighty-two filibusters against their nominees. But from 2009 to 2013, President Obama alone faced eighty-six.14”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“When it was time to sell the Constitution to the American people, the Framers made majority rule central to their argument, especially in the Federalist Papers, which were authored by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay. In Federalist 22, Hamilton takes on the advocates of supermajority rule, explaining that “what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison.” It would be wrong “to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser,” because if “a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority,” the result would be “tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.” Decision-makers would sometimes fail to find consensus, he acknowledged, since there are times when issues “will not admit of accommodation.” But in such instances, if the minority was allowed to block the majority, the government’s “situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy,” Hamilton wrote. When consensus failed, Hamilton argued, the “public business” must “go forward.” Allowing a minority faction to stop the majority invited all kinds of mischief and interference, he warned, explaining that such a system “gives greater scope to foreign corruption, as well as to domestic faction, than that which permits the sense of the majority to decide.”28”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Do you want to look nice, or do you want to take out your opponent and win this thing?” “I want to do what it takes,” I said. “I want to win this thing.”1 —A conversation between Roger Ailes and Mitch McConnell”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“One of the controversial Bush nominees the Gang of Fourteen deal failed to stop was a partisan operative with no judicial experience. His qualifications were primarily political, having been an assistant to Special Investigator Kenneth Starr before becoming staff secretary to President George W. Bush. An active member of the Federalist Society, he had been nominated in 2003, before the Gang’s deal was struck, but the Senate declined to confirm him due to his extreme partisanship and lack of qualifications. Daring Democrats to block him again and give Republicans a reason to go nuclear, Bush renominated him in 2005. His hearings were contentious, but he made it through the committee.68 Intimidated by Republicans’ continued threats to go nuclear, Democrats declined to filibuster him when his nomination came to the floor. On May 26, 2006, by a vote of 57 to 36, he was confirmed to the U.S.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Motivated by their all-consuming desire to protect Jim Crow and building on the work of obstructionists who had come before them, southern senators of the early twentieth century honed a procedural tool to empower, for the first time in American history, a minority of senators to systematically block bills favored by the majority.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Many of the donors were in their 70s and 80s, the anti-communist, John Birch Society people,” recalled Bob Hall, a liberal activist in North Carolina who worked against Helms in the 1970s. The same “donors who fought child labor laws in the 1930s were still around to bankroll his campaign.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“the modern Republican Party is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally party, both of which are far-right populist parties that verge on neofascism.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“He didn’t need to say anything, because there was nothing more to say. His only son was dead and his government had failed to give a damn.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“a reactionary superminority”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“At no point in the twenty-first century have Senate Republicans represented a majority of the American population, even at their high-water mark of fifty-five seats from 2005 to 2006.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Senators spend the vast majority of their time fundraising, and their brief sojourns on the floor are afterthoughts, if they register at all.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“even when the Senate is in session it usually takes half of Monday and Thursday off, and all of Friday.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“Before that crucial turn, the filibuster was a delaying tactic, and was rarely successful in the end against a determined majority. But after the supermajority requirement was introduced, the filibuster could reliably stop bills, and it began being used to do just that.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

“backed by broad majorities in Congress and the public, to fail in the face of obstruction by a minority of senators.”
― Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy