Everyone, their brother, and their red-headed stepchild is linking to this nice piece of reporting done by McClatchy. It shows that the Senate (or more accurately Republicans in the Senate) are using the filibuster at a record-setting pace. Actually that barely describes it - they are on pace to basically triple the old record this session. This is troubling. So given current events I ask the question - is the filibuster worth keeping? For that matter, is the (undemocratic in many other ways) Senate worth keeping?
Posted by armand at July 23, 2007 04:28 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsF&*k the republicans for arrogating to themselves the high ground on this. What, now the filibuster is an exercise of principle in a sharply divided senate? A year ago it was the most unworthy arrow in satan's quiver. F*&king whatever. As soon as the Dems won, you knew it would come to this, but so starkly and so rapidly and so utterly unabashedly?
And this: "I would challenge our friends on the other side of the aisle to step up and take a chance on something big and important for our country." Is he serious!? How about they step up and allow a proper "up or down vote" on various pieces of legislation that something like 70% of the country plainly supports? It's one thing that the Senate is designed to be deliberative and patient; it's something else to say that it's there to serve as the boulder in the cog of representative government. The people speak in poll after poll, in election after election, so as far as I can tell, McConnell's "something big and important for our country," pretty much by definition, must entail more miserable, murderous, doomed to fail policies uninformed by the exigencies of the issue in question and indifferent to the preferences of a clear majority of the people.
It would be nice, however, to think that this is a phase, speaking procedurally. The idea of the Senate is far more appealing than the current reality. I'd rather see them attempt to jigger the rules, to the extent possible, to force more comity (if that's not a contradiction of some sort) and preserve the inducements to care and compromise that are built into the system, than throw it all out the window and expose us more than we already are to the obtuse passions of one side's or the other's "base," which in both cases amounts to a passing minority of the greater electorate.
But mostly I'm just sick of the hypocrisy, and journalists unwillingness to call people on it.
Posted by: moon at July 24, 2007 11:07 AM | PERMALINK