2013 Regrets
I was going to write a piece about the demise of the filibuster, but then I found this piece which says pretty much exactly what I was going to write.
The problem will come when the Republicans again take over control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. The Democrats remembered how the Republicans in the Bush years threatened to change the filibuster rule (using weak and transparently self-serving constitutional arguments) to back the Democrats off filibustering Bush Supreme Court nominees. The Republicans will remember how a Democrat President who was a staunch supporter (and user) of the filibuster rule when he himself was in the Senate minority was happy to see the filibuster circumvented. They will also remember that he abandoned the filibuster in order to pass a major and controversial piece of legislation – exactly the kind of legislation that the filibuster, if it has any purpose, was designed to to moderate in order to garner crossparty support and broad legitimacy.
- In the memories of many Republicans, the filibuster will have become a one way door in which the Democrats can pass things by ignoring the filibuster, but Republicans require supermajorities.
- (emph. ad.) And it will be a door that can be broken by fifty Republican Senators and an allied Vice President. It is easy to imagine that a Republican President with narrow congressional majorities will take such a path to undo many liberal policies and enact many conservative policies of that would not have gotten sixty votes in the Senate and therefore not have passed in so pure a form or perhaps not passed at all.
The Democrats nuked the filibuster for the sake of their beloved health care reform yesterday. But the history of American politics is like a pendulum, and given the energy of the Tea Party movement, it’s already swinging fast to the right. When the Republicans take control of Congress and the White House and slam through the Right’s agenda on everything from abortion to judicial nominees, the Democrats will come to regret their decision.
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