Filibuster Question

by Cliopatria

I had a thought, reading over some of the commentaries about obstructionism and cloture over the last weekend, and I'm pretty sure that I'm wrong but I have to ask. Why can't filibusters be dealt with by waiting them out? Oh, I've got it: party coordination. Getting through a filibuster by one senator is just a matter of time; getting through a filibuster by an organized party really would take forever. On the other hand, and don't tell any Republicans I said this, if they want to make the "obstructionist" charge stick, then the best thing they could do would be to actually force the Democrats into a full-bore filibuster. Kind of the way the government shutdown worked against Gingrich and crew a decade ago....

Because Blog Posts Should Have Links, right?: Mark Schmitt thinks that the Republican rules change proposal would be a violation of Senate rules and that Cheney, as president pro tem, would have to directly overrule the ruling of the Parlimentarian to allow the changes. This would, Schmitt belives, be a violation of procedure and process so grave as to constitute the true atomic core of the"nuclear option."

Note on Language: OK, maybe my Japanese history background makes me oversensitive on this point, but there have to be metaphors for over-reaching destructive policies which don't invoke humanity's ultimate weapon. What'll we do when someone proposes something more dramatic, call it the"thermonuclear" option? It's lazy and unhelpful. Josh Marshall proposed the"crybaby option" though he doesn't seem to use it himself. There are other possibilities."Swatting a Fly With a Sledgehammer Option" is a bit wordy, but gets the point across pretty well (and invokes Tom DeLay, subtly)."My House, My Rules, Option" would appeal to the youth vote, but would backfire with older voters who need that line... There have to be better ways of talking about these things, even in a partisan fashion.

It's been done: Florida's University Board of Governors is considering a system which would force the universities to graduate more"high priority" and"high wage" majors and fewer of those supposedly low-wage, low-priority humanities types. Immediate thoughts: in a mostly free education market, this is doomed policy; this kind of social engineering went out with the embalming of dear leaders; how could the Florida university system not consider"parks and leisure studies" a high-priority major, given the share of their economy tied to Disney, Everglades, beach and retirement travel?

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Jonathan Dresner - 4/28/2005

I'm not opposed to social engineering per se -- I'm a teacher who firmly believes that education, particularly historical education, is a part of the solution to our present ills and future challenges, after all -- but to ham-fisted, half-witted, unprincipled, and ineffective social engineering.

Jeff Vanke - 4/28/2005

If that's social engineering, then so is the college admissions process per se, in that it denies admission to some people.

I'd rather see economics and business classes be made mandatory than see quotas on humanities majors. But if so many humanities courses were not so wishy-washy, this proposal would less likely have been made. Depending on how they draw the numbers, I'd be willing to support such quotas in a large public system.

Time was, you risked failing out of college if you kept putting run-on sentences in your papers. No more. I'd bet we could get a significant percentage of a sampling of Florida system graduates who held little skills or knowledge beyond high school standards.

(Example: I once met a public university biology B.S. who had NO idea how many milliliters went into a liter. But then again, that would not be solved by this proposal. The standards problem is bigger than that.)

Jonathan Dresner - 4/27/2005

There is a difference, I would suggest, between colleges which only have certain limited majors -- students which enter those colleges would know that they do not have the entire range of academic/professional training to choose from -- and comprehensive institutions which try to channel or limit majors in certain fields for non-academic reasons. There are still plenty of schools which offer limited choices, but the proposal isn't that Florida universities would offer fewer majors, just that they would (somehow) control student demand....

John H. Lederer - 4/27/2005

I have been off and on trying to think of a historical event where religious faith has been a significant motivation, and then to do a quick survey to see how historians have mentioned or not the religious motivation.

One event that occurs to me is the prologue to the Revolutionary War at Lexington-Concord. Reverend Clark's assurance to Hancock and Adams when asked the night before the event whether the locals would fight to resist the British that "I have trained them for this hour" and his subsequent widely publicized sermon suggests a significant religious motivation.

I am not sure that you would regard it as an acceptable test case?

Andre Mayer - 4/27/2005

Of course, for much of the history of American public higher education, many students were admitted only if they committed to pursuing a specific major: education, at a normal school/teachers college. Florida's attempt to channel students into well-paid private sector fields is, however, entirely different from the former strategy of attracting them to lower-paid public employment.

John H. Lederer - 4/27/2005

I have not forgotten -- but it will be delayed until I have time

John H. Lederer - 4/27/2005

I concur that it is not all that is going on. It is a significant part, and I think, has been obfuscated or at least ignored.

David Silbey - 4/27/2005

By the way, Mr. Lederer, you still owe me some citations of historians who have difficulty handling religion as a genuine motivating force.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/26/2005

Mr. Lederer, You point to one thing that is going on and seem to claim that that is _all_ that is going on. Surely not.

John H. Lederer - 4/26/2005

Depends on how deceptive the democrats are. It is one thing to block "extremist" judges, It is quite another to block the Bush's four nominations to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals unless and until Pres. Bush renominates the wife of Sen. Carl Levin's cousin whom Pres. Clinton originally nominated but the Senate did not act on.

And..that... is the reality of what is going on.

Robert KC Johnson - 4/26/2005

I think we're dealing with uncharted waters here. There hasn't been a real "filibuster" in the Senate in two decades, because so little of the Senate's business any longer is really conducted on the floor. Instead, what we've really seen develop, dating from the mid-1980s and the Dems' recapturing Senate control, is an ad hoc system in which the Senate has become a super-majoritian body, with judicial nominations, just like anything else, effectively requiring 60 votes. Whether that's a good system is debatable.

The Dems' "slowdown" promise, however, strikes me as an empty threat. Reid has already exempted so many things from the delaying tactic that I fear the Repubs will simply wait out the attack.

Anne Zook - 4/26/2005

I think there's a basic difference in this situation in that a majority of citizens are already disapproving of the Republicans' efforts to shove Bush's nominees through Congress. I don't think the Democrats are going to see much negative fall-out. (Assuming they show a tenth of a grain of common sense when they're talking about it publicly.)

Jonathan Dresner - 4/26/2005

I would think the Republicans, who are already nervous about how the general and voting population views the "crybaby option" (as Josh Marshall called it), would be better off forcing a filibuster rather than allowing the Democrats to claim the rules change as provocation.

Jason Kuznicki - 4/26/2005

I think the Republicans are counting on the Democrats to shut down government business in retaliation for a majority-vote rules change on the filibuster. It's not filibustering that they hope to encourage, but rather the full-fledged shutdown that has been promised if the rules change goes into effect.

The shutdown will let the GOP blast democrats in just the same way that happened during the Gingrich years--with the difference being that the Democrats, the minority party, will be the losers.

In the short term, I'm thrilled. Shut down the government; make a libertarian smile. In the long term, I continue to worry about the bad effects of one-party rule, especially where that one party is big-government conservative, and where I am a small-government liberal.