All over the Internet this morning, liberal commentators are bemoaning the idea that “41>59” – that now that the Brown victory denies the Dems the ability to force cloture on filibusters (barring the not-entirely-unlikely prospect of flipping someone like an Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins).<\/p>\n
“Nowhere in the Constitution is this mentioned” they plaintively whine.<\/p>\n
Either is the recipe for Senate Navy Bean Soup; it’s a tradition.\u00a0 So is the idea of cloture.\u00a0 It’s a rule the Senate adopted, largely in keeping with its own mission to be the deliberative, “conservative” body that is supposed <\/em>to serve as a high hurdle for new legislation.<\/p>\n Dumb Dems don’t know this – and the smart ones don’t seem to be mentioning it – but the Senate can try to change this at any time.\u00a0 It’s called “the nuclear option” – changing the Senate rules to forego cloture and close debate on a simple majority vote.\u00a0 The Republicans talked about it when the Dems were holding up George W. Bush’s judicial nominees; they blinked and forged a compromise which was frustrating in the short run<\/a>, but a good idea for the nation as a whole.<\/p>\n It’s one of a number of protections built into – or added onto – our system to protect the minority from <\/em>the majority.\u00a0 It’s like the electoral college…<\/p>\n …which is another thing the Dems wanted to tube when it twarted their ambitions.<\/p>\n Majority rules in this country – but not absolutely.\u00a0 There’s a good reason for that; a stupid majority can be a terrible thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All over the Internet this morning, liberal commentators are bemoaning the idea that “41>59” – that now that the Brown victory denies the Dems the ability to force cloture on filibusters (barring the not-entirely-unlikely prospect of flipping someone like an Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins). “Nowhere in the Constitution is this mentioned” they plaintively whine. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8021,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions\/8021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}