No matter what happens tonight or on election day in November, the comity of the Senate is going to be decreased next year. Ezra Klein doesn’t come right out and say that, but it’s implicit in his overall point.
Part of the narrative that’s emerged is that these primaries show an anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, year. That’s right, but it’s mixed, incoherently, with pro-party — which is to say, pro-Washington establishment — results. The different bases are eliminating politicians who’ve been insufficiently dedicated to holding their party’s line. The result will be much more significant than merely the election of three new senators. Rather, surviving senators will upgrade the threat an unhappy base poses to their reelection and trim their independence accordingly. The moderates and compromisers who are left will stop acting like moderates and compromisers. This election looks, if nothing else, like it’s going to be a big step forward in bringing strong party discipline to the Senate.
Part of that excerpt I disagree with. Bob Bennett, for example, got bounced out of his senate seat primarily because he voted for TARP and he introduced a health care bill a few years ago that had the incredibly unconstitutional Marxist personal mandate that everyone purchase insurance. Those were Washington GOP establishment positions (at one time, anyway) that are very unpopular with rank and file Republicans. Bennett wasn’t fired for bucking his party leadership, but for bucking convention-going Utah Republicans’ wishes. If Bennett was guilty of ‘insufficiently holding his party’s line’ it was only in the sense that he didn’t engage in enough rank hypocrisy and fear-mongering once Obama became president.
But Ezra’s larger point mostly stands. Whether Blanche Lincoln loses or not, the message has been from voters in Arkansas, Utah, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania that they expect their politicians to support the party line. And, while that is distinct from the watered down version of that line that is practiced by the insiders in Washington DC, the result will be more party discipline. But more party discipline means less interparty cooperation. And with 60 votes as a requirement for getting anything done, we’re headed for more gridlock than we’ve ever seen.
There are only two ways out of this. Either the Dems actually pick up Senate seats so that they can pass any procedural vote they want to, or they revise the filibuster rule in some way to allow the Senate to do its business. We can’t have another Congress like the current one, let alone one that is even more deadlocked.
