Senate Filibuster Deal Reached

Dr. Steven Taylor of PoliBlog is currently in DC on vacation. But being the political junkie he is, he writes a few thoughts about the deal. Click on the title for the whole post. In fact, if you haven't visited PoliBlog you don't know what you have been missing. Any political science student should have this site bookmarked, as well as the average political junkie.

The part I want to comment on is:

As I have long argued that the Democrats would have
been better off to pick a couple of nominees to block, I have to say this is the right way to go. Filibusters should be used only for extreme circumstance.

This is the way it should be done.

In fact, the people that are hailing this deal as some kind of miracle probably don't remember the deal making days of the Reagan Administration (and others before him, as well). The Dems and the GOP both used the media to argue the merits of any given issue just as they do today, with one exception.

They made deals where both could claim victory and business could still get done.

One deal in particular was with Dan Rostenkowski. I forget the what the bill was (it might have been the tax bill), but Reagan called Rosty in and asked him if there was any possible way he could send him one that he could sign. Rosty said he could, but he needed the President's camp to not criticize it until it was done. His claim was that if the administration slammed it at every phase along the way, lawmakers would not be able get it done and it would be killed.

Reagan agreed and called Don Regan into the office and told him of the deal in front of Rosty. It was not criticized, until afterwards. He ended up signing the bill. Both sides got enough to claim victory on what they felt was important, at that time. The government did not shut down.

But back to this deal.

This Senate deal is something that needed to happen because the Dems had to have a way to save face. They lost the public relations war on this and they knew it. They also knew they couldn't stop the nuclear option. They knew that they used this whole issue as a desperate means to obstruct, with the specific intent of rendering this government ineffective. And they have done it, for no other reason than to discredit this administration.

The public also knew it.

Every Democratic obstructionist senator knows fully good and well, that using a filibuster to block nominees for no good reason is not wise politics. If they don't know it, they should.

If they are constantly threatening a filibuster or they conduct one on an issue that isn't important in the grand scheme of things, they must also understand that there will come a day when they will truly need one. And support will be thin, due to the fatigue factor.