Senator Kerry delivered an especially powerful speech on the floor of the Senate on July 26. It was a strong defense of the Democrats’ legislative record in Congress and a damning indictment of the GOP’s entrenched politics of obstructionism. In that speech, the Senator put the Roadblock Republicans on notice as to what they can expect from Democrats in both houses of Congress in the weeks and months to come.

A full text transcript of the speech is posted on this website here, video footage of the speech is posted on JK’s Senate website here, and following are some key excerpts from the speech as well:

Last November was one of those truly rare moments in the short history of our country and our democracy. Any political science student taking a freshman lecture, of course, will hear how incredibly hard it is to remove entrenched congressional majorities. They know the statistics about how hard it is to defeat incumbents around here. It doesn’t happen that often.

But sometimes, the American people rise up in one moment, as they did last November, and they make history. Just six times in our 230-year history has one party lost both Houses of Congress, and 2006 was the first time the Republican Party failed to win a single House, Senate, or gubernatorial office previously held by the Democrats.

We Democrats have been in that predicament. In 1994, Democrats woke up to a landslide defeat some people thought would never come. It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always collegial, but we listened and we learned. Together, we reached across the aisle to balance the budget and reform welfare. We wrestled with why we had lost, and we wrestled with what we had to do in order to come together — not just as a party but as a country.

Evidently, some people still haven’t wrestled with what happened last November 7.

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The President said he got the message, but the question has to be asked: What have Republicans done since then? Where are they, six months after their worst electoral defeat in 50 years? What happened to the President’s post-election statements when measured against the President’s actions and those of the Republican minority in the Senate? Those actions tell a very different story.

Before the dust had settled, before defeated Republicans had even cleaned out their offices, this President and his remaining allies in Congress has made a calculation, on issue after issue, that they would just set out to stop everything from happening and then they would turn around and they would ask: Why is nothing happening under the Democrats?

This is a pure political calculation. It is wrong for the country, and I respectfully would suggest, ultimately, it will be wrong for the party. They would rather spend their time attacking Harry Reid than attacking the Nation’s problems.

‘Delay’ is no longer just a former Republican leader; it has become a Republican way of life.

We have been busy debating progress in Iraq around here and measuring benchmarks. I can’t help but think as we talk about measuring benchmarks that pretty soon the Iraqi Government is going to wonder whether the Republican caucus is going to meet any of its benchmarks or any of the country’s benchmarks.

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Regrettably, there is, on almost every one of these issues, today as I stand here a gap between how many of those policies that are aimed to help everyday Americans, which enjoy the majority support of the Senate, and how many have actually been signed into law. Why? One simple reason: The President and his allies in Congress have decided to use every means at their disposal just to slow it down and block it, to stand for a policy of obstruction and obstruction and obstruction, not accomplishment for the American people.

They have vetoed and filibustered and killed bills in conference. They have wasted days and days with procedural motions and delays that have nothing more to do in their purpose than to waste time and squander the trust and patience of the American people and, ultimately, to hope to be able to blame it on the Democrats.

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The Republicans are now setting records for filibusters and obstruction. The Senate record for filibusters is being set already, and it is only halfway through this term. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never, in the field of Senate legislation, was so much progress blocked for so many by so few.

Actually, they have made history, I suppose, because thanks to the Senate Republicans, L.A. is no longer the center of gridlock in America — it is right here. On issue after issue, the Republicans have chosen to filibuster — and to do so just 2 short years after they declared the filibuster, as their then-leader, Bill Frist, said in late 2004, “nothing less than the tyranny of the minority.’‘

After expressing outrage at the mere hint of a Democratic filibuster last session, the Republicans have suddenly become the principled champions of so-called minority rights in the Senate, but minority rights apply to legitimate filibusters for legitimate issues, not a policy of obstruction to stop everything that comes along.

After threatening the so-called “nuclear option’’ when Democrats stood up to defend the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they have introduced a filibuster to stop everyday business in the Senate. Almost everything the majority leader tries to do here now requires us having a cloture vote in order to prevent a filibuster.

In fact, the rubber-stamp Republicans of the previous seven years have now become the Roadblock Republicans. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become the party of red tape — vetoes, filibusters — any means necessary to deny the will of the majority of the Senate and the vast majority of the American people.

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Instead of the Senate’s highest shared principles of consensus and bipartisan accomplishment, the Republicans have chosen the lowest common denominator — a zero sum game in which they are willing to gamble the American people’s loss for Republican gain. The Republican strategy seems to be to slash the tires of the Senate and then wonder why we are still stuck on the side of the road and blame somebody else for that problem.

Let me be clear what I am criticizing here. I support the right of the minority to filibuster. In fact, I have done so myself. Every Senator in this body has that right. I support that right. But when filibustering, not for the principle of the issue at hand but for the generic, broad strategy of stopping what happens here so you can blame the party in charge for not being able to finish the work, that is unacceptable. The rights of the minority in the Senate ought to be protected, but they also ought to be used responsibly too.

Mr. President, obstruction for obstruction’s sake is not in the best traditions of this great institution. It is the worst kind of cynical political calculation. I think all of us on our side would join in voting to protect the right of the minority to be able to filibuster. We all understand that what goes around comes around, and the time may come when we again may be in the minority.

We Democrats don’t want to use the nuclear option. We are not even talking about it. We want to pass bills. We want to pass bills that are supported by a majority of people in the Senate, including Republicans, and certainly supported by the majority of Americans.

I say to my Republican colleagues that there is a better way to do business. We can work together and actually do something positive for the American people. All of us know this is a uniquely challenging moment for this country. We face new threats and hurdles no generation has faced before.

We ought to be working together to solve those problems. The only chance this Senate has to make a real contribution to history is to make a bipartisan contribution. That is the only way the Senate meets its own expectations.

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We all know the limits of a politics of division, of partisan sectarianism. A politics of division can rush our country into war, but it cannot sustain our trust or the war itself. A politics of division has no answer for 12 million undocumented workers in our houses, fields, and factories. It has no answer for 45 million Americans with no health insurance, no answer for icecaps that are melting or a failed policy in Iraq.

The politics of division is bad for America — from the Parkinson’s patient to the undocumented immigrant to the soldier in Iraq. Nobody is benefiting from Republican obstructionism.

It is also bad for the Senate. This Senate has been known as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But there is nothing deliberative about partisan sabotage. There is nothing deliberative about blind obstructionism.

The ongoing debate we have here is about much more than Senate procedure. At its core is a debate, really, about where we are headed in our relationship with each other, Republicans and Democrats. All of us go home and hear from our constituents about how they have lost faith in Washington. All of us want to do right by the people who elected us and try to make life better for the American people.

Any Senator who has been here for a period of time has watched the decline of the quality of the exchange on both sides of the aisle in this institution. I have seen colleagues stand up against it. I remember when Senator Gordon Smith, in the middle a painful debate on Iraq, said:

“My soul cries out for something more dignified.”

I think a lot of Senators on both sides of the aisle are concerned for the Senate. Voters want a debate over ideas, not a war of words; a choice of direction, not a clash of cloture votes. The stalemate we have now is not what the Senate is renowned for. This is called, as I said, the greatest deliberative body in the world, a place where people on both sides can find common ground and get good things done for other people.

Ultimately, we are accountable to the American people — accountable for false promises, accountable for failure to address issues we promised to address, whether it is energy independence or military families who lose their benefits. We are accountable.

Mr. President, a filibuster to stop all progress, then claim Democrats aren’t doing anything, is a failed strategy. It is a failure because it doesn’t put the American people first. I believe the American people will hold a party of obstruction accountable.