Political Quotes

“Mr. President, with the process we are in right now--and we have had questions back and forth on this whole issue of Senate rules reform--I want to respond to Senator Alexander because Senator Alexander raised some questions, and some of those questions were not answered on our side. So I want to put in a couple responses here. Senator Alexander asked the question: What is a filibuster? He was asking our side. He was asking in this debate, what is a filibuster? Well, all of us know and we have heard in this debate what a true filibuster is. We saw a hero here on our side in terms of a true filibuster when it came to Bernie Sanders just a week or so ago, where he stood up for 8 hours to oppose a tax package on principle. He took the floor and he spoke and spoke passionately. I say to Senator Harkin, another example of a true filibuster is from a movie the American public knows the best, a Jimmy Stewart movie, ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' Senator Merkley earlier had some charts on that, and he showed Mr. Smith on the floor, surrounded by other Senators, where he spoke until he collapsed. Then you have the old-time tales of the Southern Democrats when civil rights legislation was being pushed in the 1950s and 1960s, when a number of what you would say were Northern Senators were pushing an anti-lynching law because lynching was going on in the South.…”