Harry Reid confronted the progressive blogosphere last night at the Netroots Nation conference, and he made it clear that he’s heard our advice on the filibuster.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Saturday that Democrats will try to change Senate rules on the longstanding practice of filibusters.
Reid said that while Democrats were still looking at options as to how they would change the filibuster, Republicans’ use of the rules to force a 60-vote majority on most items before the Senate meant that a change was needed.
“This Republican Senate has started abusing the rules, so we’re going to have to change it,” Reid told liberal bloggers assembled in Las Vegas for the “Netroots Nation” conference.
“We do not have a plan fully developed yet, but we’re looking at ways to change it,” Reid said.
The Hill is factually inaccurate in saying that we need 67 votes to change the Senate rules. That’s true once rules have been adopted at the beginning of a new Congress, but the vote to establish the rules in a new Congress is by simply majority (51) vote, and the vice-president can break a tie. So, we can change the rules next January provided we still have 50 senators. If we don’t, we will have lost control of the Senate anyway.
I like the way Reid stated the case for filibuster reform. “This Republican Senate has started abusing the rules, so we’re going to have to change [the filibuster rule].” There’s no equivocation in that statement. It gets right to the point and it doesn’t leave any room for backtracking.
I’ve seen Harry Reid break speed records for backtracking, but this locks him in nice and tight, and he seems to actually agree with our argument against the filibuster.
The Republicans may have created quite the quandary for themselves. They’ve obstructed so abusively that they might discover they have dramatically less power with 47 senators than they had with forty-one. That kind of makes their fall campaign an exercise in futility. Good for them. It couldn’t happen to a lousier group of people.
