Filibuster Reform: Now Harry Reid's Gloves Are Off

     One more benefit from the new high water mark here at Diary-that is making Brad Delong's front page. A new commentator, The Gloves Are Off stopped by and left a comment. 

     "Actually, isn't this the strategy the Republicans use? Do everything you can to stop the government from working so you can run on a platform that says the government never works...."

     "At least the commies were saying let them destroy themselves. They weren't actually trying to do the destroying...."
      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/07/larry-kudlow-derp-no-more.html

      I took a look at his blog of the same name-The Gloves Are Off-and he has good short read on the fight over the filibuster and Reid's threat of the nuclear option. 

      "Mitch McConnell:

"Senate Democrats are getting ready to do permanent damage to this body,” McConnell warned, and made a morbid reference regarding Reid. “No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate.”

     "You know, minority leaders shouldn't want this either.  Particularly minority leaders that used to be majority leaders."

     "And as far as I'm concerned, the "end of the Senate" occurred when you, as minority leader, decided that nothing would pass without a 60 vote majority."

      "You want to maintain the Senate as it was, Mitch?  Stop screwing around and start doing the people's business."

       http://gloverman.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-nuclear-option.html

       While Greg Sargent is probably right that the Dems ideally don't want to do this and wouldn't do it if the GOP would actually be reasonable about something and allow the President's executive nominees to come up for a vote, it's also clear that Harry Reid means business this time. 

        "All signs are that Harry Reid is serious about his threat to exercise the nuclear option and change the Senate rules — ending the filibuster on executive nominations — by simple majority. While Republicans could still cave and acquiesce to Reid’s demand for action on a slate of nominations — allowing Dems to avoid taking the ultimate step, which they would plainly prefer — it is increasingly likely Reid will have no choice but to hit the nuke button."

       While there is a lot of handwringing that this could be the end of the filibuster-the GOP claims that if the Dems end the filibuster on executive nominees then a future GOP Senate will see this willy nilly as justification in ending it altogether-Reid clearly gets it that the status quo is just not worth protecting. He now admits that he was suckered by Mitch McConnell in January. 

     "But senators in both parties agreed Thursday that if Reid moves to change the rules by 51 votes, it would be used by the majority in the future to further weaken the filibuster, potentially eliminating the potent procedural weapon altogether one day. While Democrats said they were willing to roll the dice on the nuclear option, believing the GOP would go that route anyway when they get back in the majority, Republicans said Reid’s move all but assured a continued weakening — and eventual demolition — of the filibuster.

     "But Reid said privately it is time to make a change."

      "In a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday, Reid began by apologizing to his colleagues for cutting bipartisan deals to avert the nuclear option, including at the beginning of this year. And the Nevada Democrat complained that he allowed votes on scores of conservative nominees under former President George W. Bush after a bipartisan coalition headed off the nuclear option in 2005. But Reid said it had been the right thing to do because Bush had won a second term in the White House."

      "Now, Reid argued, times have changed."

      “I ate sh— on some of those nominees,” Reid told his colleagues, according to sources who were present.

       Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/the-start-of-the-filibusters-end-94062.html#ixzz2Ys8Oxxfv

     I for one have argued that it's at least debatable that the filibuster is a relic of a number of bad Senate rules that privilege the minority and needs to go. I know its felt that it protects minority rights but what it is giving us is minority rule. We basically have to Republican Houses of Congress though voters wanted Democrats in both thanks to the gerrymander in the House and the filibuster in the Senate.

     The case can at least be made that the filibuster is a relic like 3/5 of a man, voters not being able to chose their own Senators and each state getting two Senators regardless of population. All of this just serves to give us more than a minority with a voice but in fact minority rule.