The filibuster, as we knew it, is dead.
Who should we thank for this? Why, Dr. Bill Frist, M.D. (right, from eparent.)
Until U.S. Senate Majority Leader Frist acted it took 60 Senators to assure passage of anything. That was the number needed to invoke cloture, a motion to limit debate in the self-styled "world's greatest deliberative body." Any group of 41 Senators could hold questions open through this filibuster-lite tactic.
Now the number needed for passage is less than 60. Depending on the unity of the proponents of a person or position, it could be as many as 59 or as little as 50.
So a Democratic Administration with a thin Democratic Senate majority could, if its Senate members were unified, pass strong environmental laws with 50 votes (and the Vice President), voting to ignore the chamber's rules and go ahead. It could pass national health care legislation, or a gay marriage bill, on a wafer-thin majority. It could make Hillary Clinton the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Heck, it could make Monica Lewinsky Chief Justice. Get thee to law school, girl!)
This became the de-facto rule as soon as Frist moved toward what its advocates called (at the time) the Nuclear Option (probably because it's so gosh-darned funny when the President tries to say the word "nuclear").
Yesterday's historic agreement was in fact a fig leaf over this accomplished fact.
Had Lyndon Johnson thought of the "nuclear option" it's likely that Civil Rights laws would have been passed in the 1950s, and the brutal, violent struggles of that time would not have happened. (We likely would have had anti-lynching laws in the 1930s.) Many other issues would have gone quite differently, had the Senate been able to act with a simple, committed majority behind it.
Whatever you think of this Frist Rule it is an accomplished fact. Mr. Frist, a surgeon by trade, has operated on the Senate Rules and cut out what some thought to be its heart. (Yet it lives!)
The verdict on the Frist Rule is not in, but my guess is it will cause liberals in the future to utter his name with praise in their hearts, as they thank Richard Nixon for Harry Blackmun and the Clean Air Act, and President Eisenhower for freeway traffic jams.
This Great Moment in American Liberalism is brought to you by the Republican Party, serving the cause of liberty (sometimes kicking and screaming) for over 150 years.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Dave H. on May 24, 2005 09:19 AM writes...
Are you "damning with fait praise", or being completely serious? I will have to admit that it will be fun to hear the howling of the Frist-clones when Democrats do regain the majority, but I'm not sure that overall this is a Good Thing for the national polity.
Permalink to CommentBe well,
Dave H.
2. Alice Marshall on May 24, 2005 01:00 PM writes...
The filibuster is alive and well and will come roaring back directly the Democrats takeover the Senate.
Permalink to Comment3. bobby on May 26, 2005 12:46 AM writes...
The senate, as a body to balance the executive, is dead. It may have a few gasps left.. but Democracy (even tho we were supposed to have a republic (Said Franklin, “A republic—if you can keep it.”)) is essentially gone. As for a republic, it was, at that time, presumed that a republic was to be led by wise men.. I rest my case. Woe is us.
& sorry, Dave & Alice., I doubt the 'pubs will ever lose control... or, put another way, the Dems ever regain it. If you have been following the last elections (6 years or so) you no doubt have seen that the votes given are not the votes tallied. The two (closed source, unverified) voting machine companies are owned & run by avowed republicans. There is a very interesting story about a legislator, a republican, strangely enough.
2 items from the article..
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
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1) In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper.
2) Diebold’s track record
Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair Thompson, writing for scoop.co of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002 U.S. mid-term elections were “fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies.” The scoop investigation concluded that: “The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most electronic voting machines.” Those machines were supplied by Diebold.
Wired News reported that “. . . a former worker in Diebold’s Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machine before the state’s 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.” Questions were raised in Texas when three Republican candidates in Comal County each received exactly the same number of votes – 18,181.
Following the 2003 California election, an audit of the company revealed that Diebold Election Systems voting machines installed uncertified software in all 17 counties using its equipment
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there are more.. google diebold voter fraud
I am afraid the life we remember is no longer..
As Dana said, it was gone as soon as the 'nooculeea' option was threatened. Hearing 'das shrub' speak would be funny.. if it didn't remind me that
a) nearly half the country worships him
& b) while he is reading kids books upside down, playing golf & killing endangered species (9/11, most of the time, killdee (sic)), the real powers that be are raping us & the world.
and the dems are to pitiful to even take a stand...
"& did you exchange, a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage..."
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