Failure Buster

Matthew Yglesias editorialized in American Prospect The filibuster helps conservatives more than liberals. It’s time to get rid of it.

Washington is abuzz with talk that the Senate Republicans will deploy the so-called "nuclear option" -- in essence, violating the rules of the Senate to eliminate the possibility of mounting a filibuster against a presidential nominee -- in order to obtain the confirmation of a handful of President George W. Bush's appointments to the federal judiciary.

The Republicans are not talking about violating the rules of the Senate; they are talking about changing the rules, and Senate rules have a procedure for changing the rules.

Senate Democrats, naturally enough, are plotting a second strike: Through various manipulations of the Senate rules, they will bring the entire legislative process to a grinding halt. And rightly so. There's no particular reason why filibusters should be banned just for nomination votes, and there's certainly no justification for doing so in a way that violates the Senate's rules.

Other than perhaps the fact that no Presidential nominee has ever been denied an up or down vote because of a fillibuster, prior to the election of George W. Bush

The politics of the fight that would ensue are uncertain but probably winnable for the Democrats. The substantive outcome -- no passage of any bills of any sort -- is the best liberals can hope for, given the current correlation of political forces inside the Beltway.

And Democrats being blamed for the obstruction, as the Republicans were when Newt lead a shutdown of the Government by blocking budget legislation in the House

There is, however, a better way. Democrats should counter loose talk of going nuclear with a proposal of their own: The Senate as a whole could vote, through proper procedures, to end filibusters on votes of all kind, allowing passage of any bill (or nominee) that can secure a majority vote. Republicans may reject the offer, of course. But if they do so, that will only strengthen the Democrats' hand politically in combating the nuclear option -- by demonstrating a fair-minded commitment to principle over short-term partisan advantage.

Alternatively, the GOP might agree. In the short term, this would produce bad results: confirmation for some bad judges. In the long run, however, eliminating the filibuster will be good for liberals, and Republicans will rue the day they decided to sacrifice a major prop of conservatism in order to put a handful of under-qualified nominees on the bench.

Bring it on

.... The liberal difficulty is what it always has been -- getting new stuff passed into law. The public's instinctive skepticism toward novelty is re-enforced by the fact that the American political system puts into place an uncommonly large number of veto points at which legislation may be blocked. New bills must pass two separate legislative houses, each representing different sorts of constituencies; acquire a presidential signature; and pass muster with the Supreme Court. The filibuster merely enhances this tendency, already an outlier in the democratic world. It's no coincidence that the United States is also an outlier in terms of having a relatively underdeveloped welfare state. The many sticking points in the legislative process were deliberately designed by the Founders to bias the political system in favor of conservatism. Speaking ill of the Founders is, of course, not something done in polite American political discourse, but such biases are nothing liberals should embrace.

A filibuster-free U.S. Senate will give the Republicans only minor advantages.

Yeah, just the ability to get new conservative stuff passed into law.

The Democratic talking points arguing that they've only filibustered a tiny minority of Bush's judicial nominees are perfectly accurate. This, however, is the problem. Preventing the courts from being packed with bad judges is important. But it's happening anyway.

Actually it has already happened, with so many liberal judges legislating from the bench. And that is why we want more conservative judges, especially at the appellate level.

The handful of judges actually being blocked by the filibuster aren't notably worse in substantive terms than the huge quantity that have gone through already; they're just a bit easier to mount a public argument against.

I am happy to see a Democrate finally admit that.

Beyond that, the main things conservatives have been successful at passing during their moments of ascendancy are huge tax cuts. But tax cuts -- thanks to the arcane-but-important budget reconciliation rules -- can't be stopped with filibusters. Indeed, it's very hard to think of any major conservative legislation that's ever been stopped by a filibuster.

Remove the filibuster for legislation, and I bet the Left will see a lot of legislation they would like to filibuster

It is, by contrast, very easy to think of liberal initiatives that filibusters have blocked. Indeed, as conservative activist Jim Boulet Jr. has wisely argued in a memo to his comrades, the filibuster is crucial to conservatism. By his account, without it, majorities would exist to raise the minimum wage; reform labor law to make new union organizing easier; ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment; reduce greenhouse-gas emissions; and close the "gun-show loophole." I'm not a gun-control fan myself, but everything else on the list is a key priority. In the past, of course, the filibuster is most famous for its role in delaying the dawn of civil rights. Less well known is that it was integral to the defeat of Bill Clinton's health care plan in 1993. If liberals ever get another chance to go for comprehensible health-care reform, the filibuster will once again rear its ugly head.

At any given moment, the filibuster rule helps the minority party. Right now, that's Democrats. But taking the long view, the filibuster is bad for Democrats. Ideally, you'd want to get rid of it at just the ideal moment. But, realistically, that can't be done; only minority-party acquiescence will let it happen. Now's a good time for Democrats to show some rare appreciation for the importance of long-term thinking and let the right shoot itself in the foot -- rather than giving them yet another tool with which to rile up their base.

Matthew Yglesias blogged The column also scare-quotes "gun show loophole" in the conservative style. Did you know that this loophole -- which is a real loophole -- has nothing to do with gun shows? Conservatives seem to think that labeling it "gun show loophole" is part of a massive liberal scam. I've never understood what the scam is supposed to be, exactly. Nevertheless, gun shows have nothing to do with it.

Actually it has a lot to do with gun shows. It relates to delay before you can buy a gun, and if that delay is longer than the time the gun show would be in town, one could not buy guns at a gun show. This is why Instant Check is the answer

Orrin Judd blogged It would, of course, be a change in the rules, not a violation of them. But Mr. Yglesias is too conservative: the best America can hope for is that the Democrats shut down the Congress.