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Republican strategy: Filibuster everything, win in November

By DAVID LIGHTMAN

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are using the filibuster to limit and often derail Democrats' initiatives, paralyzing the Senate and making it nearly impossible to accomplish even the most routine matters.

The filibuster strategy "makes the Senate dysfunctional," said Mark Strand, the president of the Congressional Institute, a nonpartisan research group. That, in turn, blocks the Obama administration's agenda, but it also sours public opinion on Washington, with polls showing clear public disdain for Congress in particular. Republicans think voters will reward them for that in November.

However disruptive it is to governance, their extensive use of the filibuster - extended debate to block a decisive vote - could prove to be a valuable campaign asset this fall. Democrats used similar tactics in 2006 and won enough seats to gain a Senate majority. Now Republicans hope it's their turn.

Since Barack Obama became president nearly 13 months ago, Republicans have made it clear that 60 votes - the number needed to cut off debate in the 100-member Senate - are required to pass not only major Democratic programs, but also many routine proposals. (Democrats controlled 60 Senate seats from July until Feb. 4, when Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was sworn in.)

"Republicans have ratcheted use of the filibuster up to completely unheard of levels. Look at the things that the House (of Representatives) has passed that can't make it through the Senate. The list just keeps growing," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right policy organization.

The list includes legislation to overhaul health care, which has stalled and isn't a good bet to be revived; global warming legislation; and a bill to overhaul financial regulation. Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada scaled back a bipartisan jobs bill, fearing that a larger package would get tied up in a filibuster. He also filed a "cloture petition," meaning he plans a vote to cut off a filibuster if one starts.

The Senate's 2009-10 votes to cut off filibusters have come on a wide variety of issues, big and small: Health care, domestic and defense spending, and 15 Obama nominees. While 38 of the 42 votes to cut off debate were successful, the debates about debates tie up the Senate and often prevent measures from ever reaching the floor.

"Republicans are gambling they can convince the American people Democrats can't get much done, and at the moment, their gamble is paying off," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat and the president of the New School in New York.

Filibusters weren't supposed to be this effective in the modern era. Senate Rule 22 used to require 67 votes to shut one off. However, outrage at filibusters against civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, plus the post-Watergate clean-up-government mood, led to the adoption in 1975 of a 60-vote threshold for ending filibusters.

Ironically, that change helped popularize them.

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The rise in filibusters began in earnest in 1987, said Senate historian Don Ritchie, when Majority Leader Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., began using the tactic more frequently. Democrats had regained control of the Senate for the first time in the Reagan administration, and Byrd often felt he could attract enough Republicans to get his agenda through.

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I hope this does not happen. If they do this, they truly do not care about the country.

U.S. is in a royal mess.  For one year, we are at a legislative stand-still. The Dems have wasted a year by trying to swing the legislation too far to the left; they misunderstood how to use their majority force. They assumed that all would line up to far left ideology but that NEVER happens.

Now that they know their experiment did not work, they need to swiftly move to the center.

Republicans filibustering a centrist policy would be wrong and would necessarily need to get serious push-back from the centrists.

If the Dems continue to push a far-left ideology, they will get the push back also.

Again, the country is a mess and we cannot afford a stand-off.

-- Edited by Sanders on Sunday 14th of February 2010 09:35:26 PM