"Mandating supermajorities to pass legislation -- all legislation -- is a twisted take that undermines the government's ability to function."

And of course, it's not just legislation, but judicial appointments, ambassadorships, and mid-level appointments like the Undersecretary for Food Safety in the USDA. On this last item, with big food recalls happening frequently, shouldn't we have somebody in that office?

I don't think the founders of the nation were trying to design a system where the process of getting the "advice and consent of the Senate" for presidential appointees would take many months and then result in a lopsided approval.

Weren't the Republicans the ones who divised the "nuclear option" when they got upset about the threat of a Democratic filibuster? I don't recall McConnell pontificating about the glorious history of the filibuster then.

, , , the Senate never operated this way, it wasn't designed to operate this way, and as we've seen repeatedly of late, it can't operate this way.

Don't worry, as soon as the American people are stupid enough to give the Republicans the majority again in the Senate those rules will be swept away. Then the Republicans will be able to resume their quickmarch toward establishing the Christian States of America.

Sigh. I suppose we should look forward to the day when Democrats return tradition and civility to the minority party.

Mitch McConnell believes the chamber is "operating very much as the Founders intended"?

Guess he forgot about Art I, Sec 3, Para 4, that pretty clearly indicates the intent was 1/2 + 1 was the usual threshold.

Yes, the Senate can make its own rules, and there's nothing that explicitly mandates majority rules for passing legislation, but Mitch is smoking crack if he thinks that is what the Framers intended. Even Hamilton saw the value in supermajorities only in the instances Chait mentions.

You can bet the filibuster rule will change when the Republican get the majority.

This reminds me of an email exchange I had with Carl P. Leubsdorf Sr., the Dave Broder of the Dallas Morning News.

From:"I.F. Thunder"

To:"Carl P. Leubsdorf Sr."

My point is that it was the Democrats who held a narrow majority in 2007-2008, and it was the Republicans who used the filibuster in unprecedented fashion, until now. Now the Republicans are breaking their own record, which does not support your claim.

Try a link, it won't hurt you!

http://pwtenny.newsvine.com/_news/2008/07/28/1702741-obstructionism-senate-republicans-filibuster-their-own-bills

--- On Thu, 12/3/09, Carl P. Leubsdorf Sr. wrote:

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 1:34 PM

I'm not sure what your point is. If you're arguing that the Democrats didn't use the rules to prevent majority rule in 07-08, that's simply not true. Both parties do it.

It's of more consequence now, I think, since we have anew administration with a broad program for which the public voted that is unable to get its business done.

But the fact is that, if there were some more centrists, it would be possible to reach compromises. But there aren't so we have these constant 60-vote tests.

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:27 PM, I.F. Thunder wrote:

Hi Mr. Leubsdorf,

In your article,

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-leubsdorf_02edi.State.Edition1.2c4c575.html

You state, "Democrats did the same thing when the GOP controlled the Senate."

I don't see where your link provides evidence of this claim. Here's a McClatchy story from July 20, 2007:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/18218.html

"Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes � 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office."

And now the Senate Republicans, having been repudiated in two straight elections, are going to make the 110th Congress look like a model of cooperation.

This problem you ascribe to partisanship, after the making the unsupported claim "Democrats did the same thing."

As I see it, the Republican party has engaged in unprecedented obstructionism because journalists such as yourself let them get away with it, via false claims of equivalence.
~

Any Democrat is a naive fools if they don't advocate breaking the filibuster now. It can be done at any time with 50 vote + Biden. If those votes do not exist, Progressive Democrats should work to replace Obama/Biden and other Senate Blue Dog Dems with more progressive leaders. Obama and the Dems are not acting to really create jobs.

Do the Democrats have any history of utilizing the filibuster as an offensive political weapon of mass destruction rather than a defensive mechanism?

The Press should be interrogating Republicans on their attitudes toward majority rule.

When Repub's had the congressional majority during the Bush-Cheney regime, they relentlessly repeated -- on every TV network program, every newspaper interview, every radio broadcast, ad nauseum -- "we just want an up or down vote" and "Dem's are being obstructionists" on every nominee or bill or whatever they wanted.

Yet Dem's, with a greater majority, in the face of far greater obstructionism from repub's, play total patsies. WTF! Why, why, why can't Dem's FIGHT for crying out loud!!? Yes, many Americans are stupid. But more importantly, they are simply UNINFORMED, because Dem's let Rep's lie, lie, lie and control the message.

I'm all for civility, but not for being trampled. Unless we control -- or at least strongly articulate -- our message(s) to the vast majority of uninformed voters, Rep's will regain power.

And, as many have suggested, the GOP won't waste ONE second undoing the Senate's 60-vote threshold for approving anything that they are now abusing.

The chamber is "operating very much as the Founders intended," McConnell insisted.

Sorry, Mitch. Right now the government is operating much as it did under the Articles of Confederation. We have a government powerless to take steps to act in the interests of its citizenry while that citizenry is preyed upon by moneyed interests.

The Founders rejected that in the most explicit terms when they gathered in Philadelphia in 1787. You might even say they refudiated you, Mitchie.

Of course all those Beltway reporters know that Mitch is pushing a phony line. They expect that from Republican politicians like they expect blowhard from a pro wrestler. They accept it as "politics" just like the announcer at a pro wrestling match accepts the blowhard and hype from the wrestlers he's interviewing. It is all part of the game for the wrestling announcer and for the Beltway press.

McConnell lies and cons because he knows he can get away with it. He would no more tell the truth in public than a stage actor would tell the audience, "you know, I'm not really Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."

The "political reporters" Steve mentions would no more call McConnell a liar than a drama critic would call Olivier a liar for claiming to be Richard Crookback or Harry, king of Britain. They expect play-acting from politicians, they get it, and go along with it.

McConnell wrapping himself in an American flag in no way diminishes his abiding point.

Republican tactics are successful because they work.

And they work because McConnell knows his opposition. He just might hold them in greater contempt than I do.

Then again, that would be impossible.

I disagree on the question of whether McConnell is lying or ignorant is open to debate. Since he has a full measure of both qualities, debate is unnecessary. Every time I see him at the podium I am appalled that such a creature could be one of our political leaders.

To JWI: "Republican tactics are successful because they work."

Do they, really? If so, how is that Obama's administration has actually passed legislation other Democrats have failed at?

They only "work" in the fact that the Republicans tout their obstruction as victory and NO ONE hails a single Democratic legislative victory as unprecedented or incredible in the face of these stubborn morons.

"They work" then, only in capturing the public imagination, and a culture who seems deeply to believe that might is better than right.

the problem is that the filibuster and the hold give a huge amount of power not only to the minority power but also to individual members. in a sense, one member has the power of 51. it's difficult enough eliminating anonymous holds, an incredibly reasonable move that no one should oppose, let alone reforming the filibuster to a point that allows government to function.

assuming they regain the majority, the republicans aren't going to repeal the filibuster for another reason: history. if you look at the last 80 years, they've spent far, far more time as the minority party in the senate than holding the majority. sure, if they win back the senate, they might want to kill the filibuster, for short-term gains. but once the filibuster is gone, it's gone for good.

the threat of the nuclear option, some years ago, was nothing more than what it was: a threat. they had no intention of ever using it.

McConnell made this case in a room of political reporters. Any of them foolish enough to accept his nonsense at face value have fallen for a weak con.

Agreed. Really, though, would this nonsense be any different than any of the other mountains of bullshit they've fallen for -- hook, line, and sinker -- over the past 15 to 20 years?

"NO ONE hails a single Democratic legislative victory as unprecedented or incredible in the face of these stubborn morons".

Rubbish.

But name me a single instance in which congressional republicans were attacked for their perverted cohesiveness in plain terms that struck at the heart of their fascist underpinnings? (I define fascism as corporate power wed to political power). You can't, and you damn well know it. More to the point, you know why.

The cover provided by GOP obstructionism is too damn convenient for a democratic party intent on maintaining its charade of being a defender of the poor, middle class, and working people of America.

The senate is broken. The spirit for which the filibuster rule was created has been abused to the point of crippling the senate. It should be abolished so the senate can function as it was intended to function, by majority rule with the VP being the deciding vote in case of a tie.

If we the people wanted a different agenda we would elect a different majority. As it stands now about 22% of represented people are blocking what 88% of the population voted for. The senate repubs stated out loud that they would block everything just to cause failure to the democratic agenda regardless of how it affected the nation.

The senate filibuster should be abolished as it is unconstitutional and anti-democracy. At a minimum its use should be limited so it is rarely used...and "holds" should have a time limit and force a debate with those who support the hold...and then be voted on immediately for the sake of keeping the government functioning.

The only way I see out of the impasse created by the Republican abuse of the filibuster is for the Dems to push for a rule change the next time the Repubs have a majority. We tell them that we will either filibuster everything they try, just like they did to us, or we get rid of the filibuster. They will agree to end it; they will implement their agenda enthusiastically; their agenda will fail miserable; we will get elected to pick up the pieces. If the country survives, we will emerge stronger than ever. Otherwise, we are in a death spiral.

By any objective standard the Dimocratic party needs to be replaced with a real political party, one that stands and fights for something. Between the spineless Dims in Congress, not to mention the DINOs, and a president who stupidly thinks bipartisanship is possible, we have a dysfunctional mess.

Obama hornswoggled us into believing he was a change agent, when he's mostly a timid incrementalist. We didn't get real health care reform because that would mean either a single payer system or a public option. Financial reform is at most some tinkering at the margins, not the kind of protection we need from financial institutions too big to fail. His record on civil rights, torture, rendition, and the wars is woeful. Just more of Cheney/Bush. And he doesn't yet understand that the key to political success is doing something about joblessness. He has no coattails, and has already said he'll stay away from sensitive elections because he has a negative effect.

No matter what happens in November it is already clear that we are likely to have two more years of gridlock. Certainly that's true if the Dims hold onto the Senate and don't change the rules to modify or end the fillibuster. If the Rethugs retake Congress, Obama is the veto stopgap, and nothing gets done because there won't be veto proof majorities even with the Blue Dogs voting with the Rethugs.

Aside from, hopefully, two reasonable appointments to the SCOUS, the Rethugs have largely stopped the biggest mandate the Dims have gotten in decades, and they did it from the minority. Will the Dims be able to do the same to the Rethugs when they are again in the minority? Of course not.

Cry me a river dude. The GOP has done nothing wrong and this we need a super majority is a bunch of bull. Its the Democravens who refuse to call the the GOP's bluff who are the problem. If legislative priorities didn't get done, put the blame where it really belongs on the Senate leadership. The House Dems took some tough votes and you don't hear them making excuses.

It could just be that the Dems have reached a deal with the Repubs. It goes like this: if Dems do not want a bill which is the favorite of the DFH to pass, the Republicans issue a threat of filibuster. The Dems then just throw up their hands. Everyone gets what they want. Republicans are able to scuttle a bill that they do not want. So are the Dems. Dems are not excoriated for not trying to move forward a lefty agenda.

Given the simplicity of the explanation for Dems' limpdikedness, this theory qualifies as the Occam's razor.

McConnell is once again exhibiting the tedious far right trait of enlisting the Founding Fathers as endorsers and sanctifiers for their anti-democratic and anti-social pathologies.

But the more important point is that the filibuster is the product, not of the Constitution written by the Founders, but of a Senate culture that no longer exists today of bi-partisan comity and loyalty to the Senate as an institution that supersedes loyalty shown by senators to party or region.

The filibuster is a Senate rule. It is a courtesy extended by the Senate to individual senators in the expectation that this power of a single Senator to bring the entire body to halt would not be abused for narrow ideological purposes but would instead be used only in those rare occasions to protect what members considered to be their state's or regions basic rights as a minority.

The fact that the filibuster is most famously known in connection with attempts by the reactionary South to prevent blacks from achieving full citizenship according to nationally-articulated standards of race relations, was our first clue of the potential that the filubuster could fundamentally change the democratic character of Congress if one of our major political parties abandoned democracy and was transformed into a political movement with the classic singleminded fanaticism that movement's exhibit in pursuit of their predetermined ends by whatever means necessary -- even ones that result in the destruction of democratic institutions like the Senate whose culture of empowering the minority party can so easily be exploited to impose the gridlock and stalemate of institutionalized Minority Rule.