President Obama, according to his own telling, would have passed a gun control bill supported by nearly every American, but the National Rifle Association drove in trucks full of money and lobbyists, buying off senators.
Obama’s story isn’t true. The NRA doesn’t work like the lobbies Obama is coziest with. And the NRA also wasn’t the tip of the spear in the gun-rights fight this month. Here is the way things really went down:
The gun-rights resistance on Capitol Hill began in late March with two first-term Tea Party senators declaring they would filibuster consideration of the gun-control bill. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid explaining they would oppose invoking cloture on the “motion to proceed” to the bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., soon joined them.
That rump of three senators expanded to a platoon of 18 who eventually signed onto the letter. In the end, 29 Republicans and two Democrats opposed proceeding to the bill — well short of the 41 needed for a filibuster. Many allies criticized this failed filibuster, but its leaders argue it was crucial to eventual victory.
Remember kids, this is a movement that according to the Left and the status quo mongers in the GOP would have you believe it’s dead, What it is, however, is an actual movement. That means it has progressed from its big rally roots to the political activism phase and, fortunately, some of those elected as Tea Party candidates are behaving as such. Yes, the NRA did help but the Obama story about it being this all-powerful lobby that makes Republican members of Congress dance like puppets on a string simply isn’t true.
And we should all be used to that from him now.
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