Rewrite: McConnell filibusters his own bill

>>> being a republican are means you can't take yes for an answer. mcmcconnel has no chance of having a building named after him like everett dirkson . howard baker was a great leader and followed by bob dole . given the increased complexity of everything that the senate was dealing with, i think he was probably the best of all republican senate leaders. but when bob dole resigned to run for president greatness ended on that day. in the summer of 1996 . minimally competent and instantly forgettable men, well on his way to being easily forgettable until today he was when he took his place in senate history as the man who has now done the dumbest thing any leader has ever done on the floor. he introduced the bill and asked for a vote on the bill where upon he changed his mind and opposed his own bill. mcconnell went to the floor this morning with a stunt in mind. the kind of thing leaders do all the time on both sides. bring something to a vote that the other party is supposed to be in favor of and then prove that the other party doesn't have enough votes to pass it. in this indication he asked for a vote to change the procedure on the debt ceiling in a way that it would empower the president to raise the debt ceiling. where did the president get this idea? he actually got it from mitch mcconnel when he proposed it in 2011 as one of the ideas that he threw around at the last minute. so here was mcconnel this morning asking for a vote that was his and he was asking for that vote to show the democrats would vote against what is now the president's idea and then harry reid shocked him by agreeing to have a vote on the stunt right away.

>> is there an objection? of course there shouldn't be. he is now agreeing to what the majority leader asked for. reserve the right to object. what we are talking about here is a debt ceiling grant matters of this level of controversy always require 60 votes. so i would ask my friend if he would modify his on sent agreement to set the threshold at 60.

>> what we have here is a case of republican ares heren the senate not taking yes for an answer.

>> just now i told everyone that we are willing to have that vote. and now the leader objects to his own idea. i guess we have a filibuster of his own bill. so i object.

>> is there objection he to the original request?

>> objection is heard.

>> whiplash.

>> whiplash. okay i've spent more time watching the floor than everyone of you out there combined and you saw two things that have never happened before . one a leader who asked for a bill and then opposed the vote to his bill saying that it should besubjected to the vote. he was fill butt bustering his own bill. and that thesiding off ter is usually in the struggle to stay awake , a punishment only reserved for the senators. not only wide awake , she actually comments on what has just happened instead of simply issuing the normal two or three word traffic cop directions that the officer is limited to. let's see what she did again.

>> i got whiplash.

>> that was a genuinely shocked united states senator . she wasn't trying to be a wise guy . she couldn't prevent the shock from forming words in her mouth. and you see her there. pushing the microphone away. pushing it away too late. what you are seeing in her state of shock . her instinks are out of sink. she had to push the microphone away. especially if she was going to mut ter something that shouldn't be heard. but the shock pushed the words out. in stanley the senate knew history had been made.

>> this may be a moment in senatis this when a senator made a proposal and then filibustered his own proposal. i think we have reached a new spot in the history of the senate that we have never seen before. he was forced to rewrite this position on the senate floor today because he forgot the unwritten rule number one for the senate leader. if you pull a stunt on the senate floor, you have to know it is going