Harkin: GOP Senators are ‘nihilists’ who ‘want to create chaos’

George Packer’s latest New Yorker article, The Empty Chamber, took an unflattering look at arcane rules in the U.S. Senate that make it incredibly difficult for virtually anything, even routine actions, to make their way through the chamber if the minority party decides it wants to obstruct.

The article is getting a lot of media attention, and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin is featured repeatedly, with Packer noting Harkin is “the sole enthusiast for [Senate] rules reform” among senior Senators, having first pushed to end the filibuster in 1995. He rekindled his quest late last year. 

Under [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell, Republicans have consistently consumed as much of the Senate’s calendar as possible with legislative maneuvering. The strategy is not to extend deliberation of the Senate’s agenda but to prevent it. Tom Harkin, who first proposed reform of the filibuster in 1995, called his Republican colleagues “nihilists,” who want to create chaos because it serves their ideology. “If there’s chaos, things will tend toward simple solutions,” Harkin said. “In chaos people don’t listen to reason.” McConnell did not respond to requests for an interview, but he has often argued that the Republican strategy reflects the views of a majority of Americans. In March, he told the Times, “To the extent that they”—the Democrats—“want to do things that we think are in the political center and would be helpful to the country, we’ll be helpful. To the extent they are trying to turn us into a Western European country, we are not going to be helpful.”