End the Filibuster Next January!

Yesterday, every returning Democrat in the U. S. Senate signed a letter calling for changes in Senate rules to limit filibusters and holds. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Carl Levin of Michigan are talking about making Senators actually recruit 40 votes to begin a filibuster and then staying on the floor to maintain a filibuster. Under current Senate rules, someone can anonymously file an objection to a vote and force a 30 hour delay.

The Democrats are also talking about forcing Senators to make holds on legislation public. Right now, holds are anonymous. That way, anybody who is single-handedly obstructing appointments or legislation would be publicly accountable.

I've got a better idea.

Get rid of filibusters altogether. Eliminate holds. It's the only way to make the federal government functional again.

Under Mitch McConnell's leadership, the strategy of Senate Republicans has been to use the most expansive interpretation of Senate rules concerning calling up legislation, filibustering, and holds to slow walk and obstruct every significant piece of legislation. McConnell's goal has been to make Democratic Party control over the White House and Congress so painful that the country will vote Republican just to escape the torment.

It's important to emphasize that McConnell and the Republican leadership didn't want to negotiate, didn't want to compromise, and didn't want any kind of horse-trading. The GOP has been responding to every defeat by becoming even more aggressive ever since the 1992 election that put Bill Clinton into office. Newt Gingich made his reputation by aggressively attacking Clinton over the gays in the military even before Clinton made office and the attacks continued right through the Republican Revolution of 1994. When Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996k, the GOP responded with impeachment charges. This time, McConnell and other senior Republicans viewed intransigence as a matter of survival. Barack Obama posed a particular kind of threat to them. By heavily emphasizing bi-partisanship as he took office, Obama, perhaps unintentionally, defined any kind of Republican cooperation and compromise as a win for the Obama administration. For Mitch McConnell, Dick Armey, John McCain, and a lot of other Republicans, cooperation with the Obama administration meant extinction and irrelevance. It was intransigence or death.

And it worked.

Until this week, Senate Republicans under McConnell's leadership have filibustered almost all legislation, slow walked almost all appointments, and generally made governance as frustrating and painful as possible. To further the overall party goal of frustrating Democratic Party governance, many Republican Senators have voted to oppose bills they personally supported, filibustered bills that incorporated many of their ideas, and even worked to block legislation they had intially sponsored.

And it worked.

Even though they got most of their major initiatives passed, the Democrats looked weak, ineffectual, and perpetually exhausted right up until last week and that's a major reason why the Republicans did so well in the 2010 mid-term elections.

If the Democrats want to make the federal government functional once again, they'll have to eliminate the means by which Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate leadership have kept them tied up over the last two years.

That means getting rid of filibusters and holds.

Instead of fiddling around the margins of the filibuster privilege, the Democrats should go for a simple, clean set of fixes. Right now, one Senator can block legislation from coming up for debate by filing a "hold" on the legislation. The Senate Democrats should eliminate that privilege altogether.

Second, minority filibusters can peventing legislation from coming up for debate at all. The Senate Democrats should eliminate that privilege as well and create a rule saying that it is a leadership prerogative to bring bills up for debate.

Finally, current rules require an extraordinary majority of 60 to end debate on a bill. The Dems should change the rules so that a simple majority of 51 Senators is required to end debate.

The effect of these kinds of changes would be to further the common good and bi-partisanship by forcing the Republican minority to negotiate with the Democratic majority if they want to have an impact on legislation.

The main objection to these kinds of far-reaching changes in Senate rules is that the Republicans would use those changes to their advantage to eliminate social security, medicare, environmental mandates, the public school systems and other things they don't like about American society.

My reply: let them.

If the Republicans want to overturn American government as we know it and are able to win majorities in future elections, they should have a right to enact their ideas into policy.

Given the disastrous outcomes likely from Republican policies, they'll probably get the extinction they richly deserve as a result.

Just Another Day on a Republican Staff

There's a minor brouhaha over somebody from the office of Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss sending some hate mail to a pro-gay rights blog.

As TPM previously reported, soon after a Senate vote to block debate on the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' someone wrote "All faggots must die" on the blog of gay rights advocate Joe Jervis. Other commenters traced the origin of the comment to a senate.gov IP address located in Atlanta, Georgia, near the offices of both of the state's senators. Chambliss' office then said it was investigating the matter.

Chambliss' office did determine that the hate message came from their office. But I don't think that's the point. From everything I've ever read about Republican politician, this kind of discourse about gay people is pretty much standard operating procedure. The only difference is that the GOP's successful filibustering of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" led some anonymous guy to let down his guard and go public with his homophobia.

Maybe the media should report that as well.

GOP Leaders Fear Palin--You Betcha

Republican leaders fear lot of things these days--Barack Obama, just about Democrat they're running against, the Club for Growth, and primary opponents among them.

I also imagine they fear the collapse of their investments. How many GOP leaders had their money with Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford anyway.

Maybe swine flu too. I hear Mitt Romney has a runny nose.

Rush Limbaugh's probably right that the Republican leadership fears Sarah Palin as well.

"Something else you have to understand is these people hate Palin too," the conservative radio host said Monday. "They despise Sarah Palin, they fear Sarah Palin, they don't like her either. She's, according to them, she's embarrassing. McCain said, 'I was there with Ronald Reagan'…. No Reagan voter ever believed McCain was a Reaganite.

What Romney, Jeb Bush, and John McCain fear with Sarah Palin is the thought of her being nominated as the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2012.

That's because Palin would lose by something like 65-35. It would be a brutal beatdown and Palin would drag a lot of other Republicans with her.

Republican leaders have so many problems they could start writing country songs about themselves like this classic from Hee Haw.

Gloom, Despair, and Agony on me
Deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, Despair, and Agony on me

They certainly don't need a Palin candidacy to make things even worse.

The Pecking Order in American Politics

There are a lot of ways to lie with numbers. But these crowd numbers tell some truth about where things stand in American politics.

At the top of the totem pole is Barack Obama.

Inauguration: 1,800,000
St. Louis and Kansas City, MO (Oct. 18, 2008) 175,000
Democratic Convention in Denver: 84,000
Portland, Oregon (May 18, 2008) 75,000

Considerably lower on the scale are the Tea Parties of April 15. The semi-official estimates were gathered together and published by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. Although moderately successful, the tea parties were still dwarfed by Obama.

Largest crowd--Atlanta--15,000
Next Largest--Phoenix, Denver, Madison WI--5,000
Average crowd size per 346 sites--900
Total Attendance--311,000

However, the Tea Parties were an enormous success compared to the recent National Council for a New America event launched by Eric Cantor and featuring the Republican "elite leadership" of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and Jeb Bush.

Event in Arlington VA pizzeria--100
(May 2, 2009)

In other words, the Republican political leadership is far outranked by the Tea Parties in the pecking order of American politics. Qualifications--yes, there are a few. Most importantly, the Arlington event was designed to be a town hall event as part of a GOP leadership listening tour and thus had natural limits on the crowd size involved. However, it is also likely that attendance was boosted because the meeting was promoted on all the major mainstream media outlets.

It is a hard cruel fact that national Republican politicians are so low in the national political hierarchy that they can't be compared to a Fox News media event.

The bottom line is that there just isn't that much interest in them.

They don't know it, but the national Republican leadership is much closer to losing their party altogether than they are starting the process of regaining Congress or the Presidency.

Ghoul Conservatism and the Upcoming "Limbaugh for President" Campaign?

A long time ago, my car irresponsibly broke it's radio antenna and I don't get much radio reception. As a result, I missed Rush Limbaugh announcing that "Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes" and that "before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."

Just like there's "zombie banks" that are still stumbling around the terrain even though they're really dead, there's now "ghoul conservatives" like Limbaugh who are costing Republicans votes through the crass little deathwatches they start for figures Ted Kennedy. Here in Kentucky, Jim Bunning's already heard his re-election efforts with his "ghoul-like" comments about Rush Bader Ginsburg's cancer. Likewise, now that progressive media outlets are reporting on Limbaugh almost everyday, it's hard not too imagine his over-the-top statements being a continual drain on Republican votes as moderate and independent voters harden in their disdain for the GOP.

What's the outcome of all this mainstreaming of Rush Limbaugh which is ratings gold for Limbaugh even as it does harm to the Republican Party?

It might be that Rush Limbaugh launches a "front porch" campaign for the presidency from his radio studio. That way, Limbaugh could heighten his political prominence while maximizing the (short-term) ratings benefits and adding a lot of money to his own pocket.

Of course, that assumes that Limbaugh's not "Going Galt" and refusing to make more than $250,000 a year. But that's a safe assumption.

Limbaugh could run for the Republican nomination or mount an independent campaign.

Or do both. It doesn't really matter. The key is that running for President is now part of the business logic of Rush Limbaugh's radio program. He would be the first major presidential candidate whose candidacy would be a (not insignicant) money-making operation.

And a Limbaugh campaign would have certain advantages. By campaigning for president for three hours every day in his radio station, Limbaugh could run a "pure" campaign without campaign contributions, disdain the "crass showmanship" of campaigning, and still get into the national media almost every day.

Another advantage is that it would probably kill the Republican Party and force conservatives to find another vehicle for their political aspirations.