Pay Attention to the Senate

I've written about this fairly often.

Recall that lefists have been attacking the Senate's filibuster rule with increasing intensity in recent months. It turns out that eliminating the filibuster has been a goal of progressives for some time. Netroots radicals, eyeing the prospects of congressional power, were making the case for destroying the filibuster in 2008, and perhaps before that. Ezra Klein, as I've discussed here, has been on an anti-filibuster jihad for close to a year. And some of Matthew Yglesias' most extreme blogging has focused on GOP use of the filibuster. Folks like this get attention at the top levels of policy, unfortunately. UCLA Political Scientist Barbara Sinclair was sucking up to Ezra Klein's agenda in her WaPo interview last month, and Klein's been known to brag about his White House connections. I have no idea who reads Yglesias, but the creep's got a big following of airheaded trolls at his blog; and he's working for the Center for American Progress, a Soros-back unit headed-up by former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta (who also worked on President Obama's transition). So Yglesias probably gets some Beltway traction

Anyway, I mention all of this in light of some of the news out this week. At yesterday's Huffington Post we had this: "Progressives Call For Democrats To Abolish The Filibuster." And today: "Carl Levin: Filibuster Could Fall ‘After Massive Conflict On The Floor’." (Via Memeorandum.) And note this interesting comment at Firedoglake:

As Ben Eidelson notes, the Senate is by nature an undemocratic institution in that the representation is skewed toward small states, and sometimes a filibuster represents the votes of a majority of the US population. In fact, that happens most of the time – 64% – when Democrats are filibustering a Republican majority, and just 3% of the time when Republicans filibuster a Democratic majority. But this is not how we count votes in the US Senate, with each Senator getting the proportion of the vote of the population he or she represents. In a perfect world, a unicameral legislature would serve the nation well. But until that time, the 60-vote hurdle, now being trotted out for routine appointments, is too onerous for a democracy to function, particularly one with such unbalanced ideological rigidity from one party.

The discussion is prompted by the administration's nomination of radical labor hack Craig Becker to the NLRB. But previously, with Klein and Yglesias, etc., the outrage was over partisan immobility on ObamaCare legislation. And we'll be having lots more debate on "gridlock" now that Scott Brown is the GOP's 41st vote.

But really notice something here. Leftists are now excoriating Senator Brown for selling out his so-called "independent" credentials to "schlep" with the GOP majority. But Brown was ELECTED to office by the people of Massachusetts. The voters there sent Democrats and the administration a huge message: Quit wasting your time and get down to business on the country's problems. The progressive contingents, rejecting electoral trends starting from last November in New Jersey and Virginia, and now Massachusetts, have decided to push an even more authoritarian agenda. And as Chris Cillizza pointed out a couple of days ago, now President Obama has decided to turn filibuster reform into a campaign wedge against the Republicans in the fall. See, "White House Moves to Make the Flibuster a Campaign Issue."

This is actually one of the more significant debates for folks to monitor in the months going forward. I can't imagine any Republicans going along with Democratic efforts to abolish the filibuster in the Senate. But as leftists become increasing desperate to ram down their unpopular agenda on the American people, they'll be turning more and more to methods designed to overturn the principles of limited-government constitutionalism designed by the Framers. Note that it's not just abolishing the filibuster anymore. Radicals are talking about abolishing the Senate. James Madison must be turning in his grave, for this is precisely the tyranny of the majority about which he warned.