Anyone here still like the filibuster?

He got the stim in his honeymoon. No legislative victories come to mind since.

I was wrong about that.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/filibuster-20-how-41-senators-control-the-country-without-actually-filibustering.php?ref=fpb

IF they then lose the challenge they have to give up a seat.

:thumbsup:

votes to pass.

At that point the Senate is no longer a chamber where 60 votes are required to pass legislation.

If it does it will never happen.

It would have to be a nuclear option or a majority vote at the beginning of a new session of congress when the standing rules are renewed.

as is, voting as usual with the republicans - Harkin is correct and has an excellent alternative solution.

charges against former-President Obama for bombing Pakistani villagers.

a Republican majority, that the party was all but dead.

In November we will support the filibuster when the bastards try to eliminate the minimum wage.

that if you want to get enough support to pass whatever it is, that the party in control of that chamber has to reach across the isle. That is really hard to do, however, when the other side is batshit crazy.

Then I realized that in countries with parliamentary system of governments, there IS no filibuster. If you have the majority, you have the right to put whatever you want into the law. The caveat being that the next parliament that comes along can reverse your edicts with its own majority. In most of the countries that have an upper chamber, the will of parliament is almost never thwarted. If you, the person exercising executive power--say the Prime Minister, belong to the party that has the most seats, but does not have a majority and the majority of parliament decides that you are a putz, they can vote not to support you, form a coalition government with their own prime minister and take control. It also allows for more representation in that people don't vote for individuals they vote for the party. The percentages of the votes is what determines the number of people the party picks to represent them, and if you as an MP vote against a bill proposed by the party they can replace you with someone else who will toe the line.

Parliamentary systems aren't perfect; case in point, Stephen Harper was able to convince the Governor-general of Canada to prorogue (shut down) parliament for political reasons (in one case he wanted to keep power, and in the other case--more recently--to allow the conservatives to pack the senate with their own supporters and to keep the opposition from looking into what the government knew about allegations of torture of detainees transferred into Afghan custody by Canadian soldiers).

So anyway, in a round about way I've pretty much convinced myself that the U.S. government could function without a filibuster, but that if it did so we would have to be willing to accept the consequences.

Q3JR4.

In November we will still have a Presidential veto and in all likelihood a slim House majority.

And even when we had the filibuster we rarely used it to stop very bad Republican policies or appointments. Certainly not enough to warrant the trade-off of being gridlocked now when we out to be passing progressive legislation given our Congressional majorities and the fact that we control the White House. Take a look at Scalito and Roberts. We let them replace a swing justice with a hardline conservative. Did we block tax cuts for the rich or the war or torture with the filibuster? I think we blocked ANWR drilling. That's about it. And even some Republicans opposed that.

Look at the history of progress. Read the first 50 pages of Master of the Senate (and that was written about an era when there was bipartisan cooperation and less ideological polarization in Congress). The Senate and the filibuster have been a huge impediment. We might have had Civil Rights Legislation decades earlier had it not been for the filibuster. We'd have something like the House health care bill now. They don't even use it now on policy grounds. It's purely political. To cripple the President and regain power.

Let them have the guts to repeal the minimum wage or Social Security when they control congress and the White House. They won't. Especially the latter. They'd be finished with the electorate and we could easily reverse either policy.

Elections ought to matter and people should have to reckon with their votes and politicians with their policy rhetoric and votes. If they ever and actually did all the shit they claim to be in favor of to appease the teabagger crowd, we'd all be wearing barrels and that would be the end of the Republican party.

I'd add that to the extent Republicans gain seats in 2010--and it looks like it's going to be to a very large extent--it will be largely thanks to the filibuster, which they have deployed masterfully and to their own political advantage, killing legislation or forcing it to be watered down so as to gain the vote of every last conservative Democrat, and therefore becoming unpalatable to rank-and-file Democrats. So it was with health care reform. By standing united against the Senate bill, Republicans ensured that only a moderate-conservative bill could get through, one that would secure the support of all the most conservative Democrats--Landrieu, Lieberman, and Nelson notably. At the same time this guaranteed that the bill would disillusion great numbers of Democrats and "gettable" (from a Democratic POV) independents going into future elections. Case in point, Massachusetts Senate special election, as polling subsequently revealed: lack of a public option particularly hurt us there, and in turn you can't get 60 votes for a public option.