This is the “gallery filibuster” — shouting by pro-choice advocates in the Senate halls after Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’s filibuster was shut down– that so delayed the vote on a proposed law virtually banning abortion in Texas that it took place too late to be valid.
Video of the ‘Gallery filibuster:
After a marathon filibuster by Democrat Wendy Davis was cut short, the Texas senate voted on a bill crafted to shut down almost all of the state’s abortion clinics. Democrats say that the vote came after midnight, making it void. Republicans insisted that it is valid. But early Wednesday morning, the state’s Lt. Governor declared that the vote came too late to pass.
Texas Republicans disregard the Supreme Court on this issue, but are delirious about the court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act yesterday.
The Young Turks explains the new Texas abortion law and its implications.
Victory called & met …
Being, I suspect, one of the few Brits who’s even heard of the late great Molly Ivins, and knowing her opinion of the Texas “lege”, I hope she’s up there somewhere nodding her approval.
The puzzling thing to me, is why republicans think that banning abortion is a “win” for them.
– They are alienating a significant number of women voters. They are pretty much writing off over a third of all voters, not a good thing to do when every vote counts.
– They are alienating a significant number of voters under 35, which are their potential future base. While about half of the under 35 are women who would be included in the item above, half are men, meaning they are now writing off almost half of the voters.
– They are alienating the non-religious and marginal religious who now make up well over half the voters. The Evangelical churches are losing members at a fast rate due to many people not liking the “fire and brimstone” and thousands of Boomers dying everyday. Even in Texas, the Evangelicals are less than 25% of the population and most of those are rural. Most of the voters in the big population centers are NOT evangelical.
When the numbers are added up, it rapidly shows being anti-abortion is NOT a winning strategy for long term growth of the republican party.
So why are they doing it?
Any sane, corrupt politician that wants to stay on the gravy train should be able to understand that republicans need to throw the social conservative overboard and move the party to the center to survive, so why don’t they do it?
My belief is that the evangelicals have a devils pact with the plutocracy behind the GOP. The plutocrats keep providing relevance to religions that should have died in the Enlightenment and the evangelicals don’t ever challenge inheritance and ongoing accumulation of property and wealth……our class society.