Call her persistent. Call her effective. Call her Elizabeth Warren, the U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
The Senate’s GOP majority this week ordered Warren to stop talking — about conservative Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose nomination for U.S. attorney general was being debated. Democrats were doing their best to slow-walk the nomination of someone they regard as no friend of minorities or civil rights.
Warren was reading a letter by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, opposing Sessions’ ultimately unsuccessful nomination to a federal judgeship in 1986. She was chastised under a little-used Senate regulation, Rule 19, which bars any senator from impugning the motives of any other or imputing “any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a senator.”
Her offense? She was reading a letter presented to the Senate by a revered civil rights leader a generation earlier accusing Sessions, a federal prosecutor at the time, of using the power of his office to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”
The Senate historian’s office could not immediately say when the rule was last invoked, but Democrats accused Republicans of selectively enforcing it. They noted the GOP did not apply it two years ago when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying. Maybe McConnell was still smarting from that episode and simply took it out on Warren for daring to challenge Sessions’ fitness.
“She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said in words that sparked liberal outrage and Twitter hashtags.
Some have said that McConnell’s gagging of Warren amounts to sexism. Why else would liberal male senators like Bernie Sanders be allowed to read from the same forbidden letter later on? McConnell may or may not be sexist, but we’re pretty sure he has little patience when it comes to listening to an effective voice in opposition to the mainstream GOP agenda or that of their putative party leader, Donald Trump, who is surely giving Republicans fits behind the scenes.
It’s unclear what McConnell and his colleagues thought they were accomplishing Tuesday by silencing a popular voice on the left, but it sure backfired. What was shaping up as a dull C-SPAN moment went viral on social media instead, with Warren giving an hour of interviews under the Capitol rotunda, reading the letter live on Facebook and garnering more strength among her supporters in the nation and back home who would like to see her run for president in 2020.
We’ve liked Warren since her Harvard professor consumer advocate days, and she’s proven to be a powerful and effective voice for the people of Massachusetts in Congress. She has a knack for formulating straightforward yet compelling arguments. Massachusetts residents – especially its liberals – may not always get their way in Congress, but until this week, their senator’s voice had always been heard.
Warren’s Republican colleagues often invoke our Founding Fathers but seem to have forgotten the lines often attributed to Patrick Henry: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been quoted as saying that the GOP leaders were “waiting to Rule 19 someone and they specifically targeted Elizabeth … I think because she’s effective.”
Massachusetts, whose more liberal-leaning majority takes pride in having voted against Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, can take more pride in having voted for Warren — a decidedly strong voice unafraid to take on entrenched corporate interests and their powerful political allies in favor of average Americans. Win or lose, it’s nice to learn that we have a strong advocate in the Senate, a voice so forceful that the majority party apparently felt an overwhelming need to block what she has to say.
So, how’s that working out, Sen. McConnell?