Even Juan Williams thinks the Senate Democrats need to go nuclear. Indeed, Harry Reid has set things up for a confrontation. He didn’t push the issue while the immigration reform bill was being debated because he didn’t want to pollute the well, but that only allowed nominations to pile up. We now have three DC Circuit judges, the EPA administrator, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Labor Secretary, members of the National Labor Relations Board, and several lower level nominees waiting in the queue for votes. The Republicans have indicated an unwillingness to confirm any of them.
The Republicans may relent on one or two in order to improve the way they are perceived by the public, but the Democrats want them all confirmed, and there are no good arguments against these nominees.
Reid has orchestrated this in a way to maximize the spectacle of obstruction. I hope he hasn’t taken all these steps only to back down one more time. But, he depends on the near-unanimity of his caucus if he is going to take action.
I have the fullest confidence that Harry Reid and a few other Democrats will, once again, find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
If anyone’s under the impression that the first thing a Republican Majority Senate does, won’t be to eliminate the Democrat’s ability to filibuster ANYthing, please give me whatever it is you’re drinking/smoking/snorting/ingesting/injecting, because “sharing, is caring!”
I was going to post something – but your second paragraph covers it completely. McConnell is already threatening to kill off the filibuster in its entirety if the Democrats tweak it in any way. Even if the Democrats don’t the GOP will change the rules anyway when they get the Senate back.
Well, possibly not if they get it back in 2014. The Democrats will still have the white house and veto power, so the GOP might just allow the filibuster to live one more term because killing it off won’t give them much advantage. BUT, if they get the triple crown in 2016 as they did in 2000-2006, the filibuster will live on, if at all, in name only.
We know this because we know the modern GOP. They completely threw out bipartisan tradition in 2009 when the Democrats got the triple crown and made 60 votes the minimum requirement for passing any law in the Senate. Yes, they started to in 2007, but in 2007-8 the Senate was only 51-49 with a few Lieberdems in the 51, and Bush still held the veto, so although filibusters went up the 60 vote threshold didn’t fully kick in until 2009.
Put the situation in reverse and they’ll break all the rules again. Because it’s what proto-fascist extremists do – there is no legitimacy bestowed to an elected official they disagree with or a governmental institution that isn’t doing what they want.
It’s time to start stacking the courts. NOW, Obama.
I can’t believe the Republicans would really go through with the elimination of the filibuster.
It has always been a profound tool for preventing progress, from the anti-lynching bills to the civil rights acts, much more than a tool to project progressive interests. Mitch McConnell knows this. As you say, “They completely threw out bipartisan tradition in 2009 when the Democrats got the triple crown and made 60 votes the minimum requirement for passing any law in the Senate.” So why would they get rid of the rule that allowed them to do that?
With the Republicans facing a long period in the political wilderness, the filibuster is going to be particularly important for them. It’s certainly true that the Republicans can be counted on to act in their self-interest, without regard to principle, but keeping the filibuster is very much in their self-interest.
The filibuster has occasionally been a tool for progressive interests, most often by anti-war forces. If you look at the history of the filibuster, moves to make it easier to overcome have been a reaction to the success of anti-war senators.
Flawlessly logical. As long as a party conceives of itself as a permanent minority party. Have our “conservative” lunatics actually arrived at that conclusion? They seem to think they need only to increase voting by Real Americans (translation: white people) and decrease voting by Fake Americans (no translation needed) to return to power.
Should Repubs someday return to the situation they had after the 2004 election, I can’t imagine that they would allow senate Dems to pull the same obstruction shit they pulled in 2009. The lure of the short term Rightwing Revolution would be too strong for all involved, most especially the nation’s plutocrats, who would have almost wholly funded the revolution.
True enough: my argument depends on the Unskewed Polls Party actually understanding where they stand.
Mitch McConnell strikes me as being quite a bit less inclined to smoke his own product than most GOPers.
It’s rather more than that. Once the R’s had the triple crown in 2000-06 (usually by a slim majority), Rove et al dedicated themselves to the belief that they could skew voting rules etc. enough to make their majority permanent and unassailable. Should they do that well again, given the current GOP’s megalomania, I fully expect they’ll do the same, and really believe it.
Short version: they’ll blow up the filibuster if they think that by doing so, they can push through laws that ensure they’ll never lose again. And they may very well believe just that.
Yes, this is exactly my theory. Logically, as Joe and others have said, it is in the GOP’s interest to keep the filibuster. But the whole party has abandoned logic for wishful thinking. This isn’t a new trend either – you saw this happening in the 90s, in Rove’s plan for the 2000 election (which, as we often forget, he actually lost), and of course in their crazy-assed schemes for occupying Afghanistan, Iraq, and later Syria and Iran.
If the GOP was concerned about future payback then they wouldn’t have gone full 60-vote-threshold-on-all-votes back in 2009. With all the structural advantages they have they’ll never get a 60 vote majority in the Senate. But they didn’t think about that.
Question: If R’s eliminate the filibuster altogether if they get the chance, can Dems prevent legislation by going AWOL and preventing a quorum? Because watch out it they do. Look what’s happening in North Carolina.
Here’s Rule VI:
It looks like it would be tough for a minority to use Rule VI to gum up the works since a quorum is a simple majority of the Senators.
But it would be entertaining. “Sorry if I delayed things – I had to make a quick trip to Argentina.” 🙂
Cheers,
Scott.
They damn well better go nuclear. We really need to have at least one house of Congress doing its job.
The Republicans will try to demagogue it, of course, but I don’t see how that’s going to work with anyone who isn’t already stockpiling weapons and antibiotics for When the Time Comes. They’ll be screaming about tyranny, but what tyranny? The gruesome spectacle of the Senate performing its ordinary duties, as outlined in the Constitution. The blood-drenched usurper, Harry Reid, scheduling confirmation votes for federal nominees. You can’t really get outraged unless you question the legitimacy of the Senate itself.
They don’t question the legitimacy of the Senate as an institution. They do reject the legitimacy of any elected officials not in their party, and the legitimacy of any voters who don’t support their party.
… is a strongly-worded letter printed with radium-based ink.
Really, I’ve long since turned my bomb shelter back into a root cellar. The nuclear option thing gets pumped up a bit every Friedman Unit or so.
Pardon my cynicism, but go ahead Charlie Brown. Kick that football that Harry Reid is holding.
Not much leeway for many weak links in the Dem chain now—Reid himself sure doesn’t seem like a strong one. And now they’ve lost Lautenberg, whom I’d assumed was willing to confront Mitch and his Repub Paralysis Machine.
We’ll see if Reid really has the 50 votes for crossing the Rubicon, and the stomach to actually confront the enemies of the republic. It will mean the federal gub’mint will be infected with a huge number of conservative white male lunatics when we get the next Repub prez and senate, but so be it. Just another issue for the fine voters to consider when electing Repubs in future. By intentionally pursuing a strategy of paralyzing the gub’mint, Repubs (and Repubs alone) forced this change in Holy Senate Tradition.
Hard to see how Reid and Obama could accept some weak compromise from Mitchipoo that lets a couple nominees get confirmed while letting Repubs flush all the others. But it’s very hard to be surprised by the weakness of the Dem party at this point.
This makes me laugh as it implies there’s still some sort of water in that well. I’m pretty sure it’s just 100% poison at this point. If I was a Democrat I would never ever ever trust a Republican again as long as I lived, and vice versa.
I think weakening or eliminating the filibuster is a terrible idea. Long-term, it’s a gift to the Republicans.
The Democrats aren’t going to be able to do much legislatively as long as the Republicans control the House, which seems likely to be for a long time. I realize we’re talking about the confirmation process, which doesn’t involve the House. However, if the Republicans win a Senate majority, the Democrats will be the party that has to rely on the filibuster, and the Republicans would find it easy to take that weapon away entirely if the Democrats had already removed it for the confirmation process.
So, strategically, I think it’s a terrible idea. Better to let the Republicans hold up the nominees. To the extent they succeed, they only hurt themselves politically. I don’t think most voters like the idea of Presidential appointments not getting an opportunity to come to a vote in the Senate
By blocking most Obama appeals court nominees (and many district court as well), Repubs are ensuring that we gain no benefit whatever from a two term Dem prez, and that the federal courts remain glutted with “conservative” white male extremists. Also, hated agencies like the NLRB and the new Consumer Financial Protection cannot even function without confirmed nominees. Federal agencies are (almost by definition) lib’rul.
Repubs are therefore not “only hurting themselves politically”. They are winning a huge substantive victory by their intentional paralysis of the national gub’mint.
I don’t think you understand. Back in the early days of C- Augustus, there was little use of the filibuster because the Blue Dogs/LieberDems/DLC’ers would just vote with the GOP. That won’t happen any more since Democrats will be labeled traitors, and worse, if they consistently help the GOP in the Senate. Given today’s GOP, and the likelihood that fever won’t break any time soon, watch out if they ever get the Triple again any time soon. If they need to pass Texas-type anti-woman legislation, they’ll surely nuke the filibuster.
Yep. Just as Republicans can be relied on to abuse the filibuster, they can be relied on to abuse the Senate majority if they ever do regain it. The Democrats might want to keep the filibuster in reserve in case they find themselves in the minority again, but a Republican majority would never let them use it for anything that mattered.
Really, though, I’d say the filibuster is as good as dead already. The Republicans killed it by turning it into a tool of obstruction rather than a way of protecting minority rights. The Democrats just need to have enough guts to pull the plug.
I think your argument has merit. And Dems will never match R’s with ruthlessness.
I wouldn’t try to set the nuclear clock by Harry’s watch. It runs slow way slow.
Russ Feingold was infamously vocally opposed to changing the filibuster.
And he was a liberal.
If Feingold was saying this out loud then you know there are some other liberals who were silently opposed.
There’s an old saying, organizing Democrats is like herding cats.
This is a tough issue for Reid when even the liberal cats are hissing.
I hope he finally does push the issue. The Republicans have bullied long enough. It’s time for the Democrats to show they mean business about governing. And that means showing they will step up for the tough fight.
They’ve been backing off long enough.