The History of the Demon Pass
It is too bad that the “Demon Pass” manuever won’t be implemented for Health Care. From what I can tell, it would have produced a better final bill.
Nonetheless, the “Demon Pass” has not died yet in the hearts and minds of the Critics. Observe this chart. Maybe it will go down in another day or two?
You’d think they were extending a fifteen minute over-night voting session until they could wrangle a couple recalcitrant voters, or something.
The thing is the Demon Pass has long been employed as a legislative tool. It was first used by Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon near the dawn of the twentieth century. He would not let the Minority Party proceed to any point of order until they answered three riddles. Sam Rayburn would later add an arbitariness to the difficulty of the three riddles, creating new solutions on the fly and not accepting some standardly accepted answers. Newt Gingrich upped the ante by throwing some Democrats into the Fifth Circle of Hades.
If the process has gotten under control, at least nobody’s promising a Nude Erection anymore. Oh wait — they are. Oh well.