Almost missed this…

“I’m looking forward to your piece on the exact same short-sightedness displayed by conservatives when their party has controlled the legislature…”- blackout

Deserves – actually – demands a reply. First, as you know, there are differences between conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, or even the “libertarian leaning” as I consider myself. I’m not sure when the conservative’s “party” controlled the legislature, not in my memory. I assume you were just being a little sloppy with the labels, and you really meant Republicans.

To address your point directly, there is no need to wait for some future piece from me. While I wasn’t blogging in 2005 when the “nuclear option” was being advocated by Frist and Republicans in the Senate, my view then was the same as now: it was short-sighted and wrong-headed. Probably the best I can do to document my perspective on that specific issue then, is point to more recent comments I’ve made on the Donk in defense of McCain’s role in defeating that GOP attack on the filibuster. One example linked here.

However, if you are truly interested in the more general views of this particular “conservative blogger” when the Republicans did control both the executive and legislative branch as the Democrats do now, I’d invite you to peruse anything I wrote in 2006 when that situation existed and I was blogging actively.

I’ve responded at length because I have a lot of respect for the tone and content of your comments at the Donk. Like Kranky, you often focus as much or more on the quality and nature of the debate as opposed to the content (or lack thereof) in the argument itself. I think that is great, and the two of you often help to keep the discussion on a more even keel around here. I also think you both bend over backward to criticize both sides of an argument as an end in itself. It is a fine approach to the Donklephant ethos – but it is not the only approach.

I came to Donklephant with an agenda, and it has not changed. I find an enormous threat to freedom, and lot of extraordinarily bad governance happens when power is concentrated in a single party controlling the executive and both legislative branches – regardless of whether that party is the GOP in 2001-2006 or The Democrats now.

As such, you’ll just have to excuse me if I don’t waste a lot of time finding things to criticize about a party as impotent and irrelevant as the GOP is today. The threat was with the GOP in 2001-2006. The threat resides in the Democratic Party today. They have all the power. They are the problem now.

Nooo….. The focus of my piece was to highlight what I perceive to be a short sighted view of some on the left regarding the filibuster rule. My intent was to point out the distinct and ironic possibility that, should they be successful, they will be making it possible for the GOP to repeal or gut ObamaCare with considerably less effort than it took to pass it (and – BTW- well before most of the benefits have kicked it).

OTOH, the focus of my comment, was to respond directly to the specific criticism in your comment.

Within the context of a piece that is dominated with Maddow primarily blaming the GOP for dramatically increasing the use and abuse of the filibuster (She even blames the payoff to Democratic Senator Nelson by the Democratic leadership for his vote on a Democratic bill on the minority GOP’s attempted filibuster). Within that context, I think this “acknowledgment” by me adequately encompassed Maddow’s “acknowledgment”:

“To be fair, she does make a perfunctory mention of the Democrats use of the filibuster to block George W Bush judicial nominations.” – mw

mw: Somebody once said something about the consequences of failing to learn the lessons of history. You might think Ezra and Rachel would learn something from the Republicans who were once so exercised by Senate filibusters, and who are now – less so.

Clearly Maddow acknowledged that both parties have been frustrated by the filibuster. Pretty slack, mw…

@mw

I am a little unclear on your point here. Are you comparing legislation defeated by filibuster or legislation “almost” defeated by filibuster? You need to keep your apples and oranges straight.

Either. My thesis is that Progressives shouldn’t protect the filibuster because it’s a tactic they never need.

I can’t remember a single right-wing piece of legislation that got filibustered. I’ve brought this up several times, and the best anybody has come up with was the Social Security bill. He seemed to think a filibuster threat was the only reason Grassley hadn’t pushed it though Committee. My own feeling is that even if it got through Committee it would have had a devil of a time picking up 50 votes because it pissed off old people, and the GOP majority at the time was small and dependent on guys like Specter and Chafee.

Dems with shot at a gain??? NFW. But if you believe it, let me know if you want a piece of this action. I’ll leave the betting window open until the end of the year.

Look at it this way:
We’ve had a terrible year. Nothing has gone as planned. And smart commentators are only talking about the loss of a single seat.

Next year we’ve got one nasty debate (cap and trade), but it’ll probably be short. The economy will probably recover somewhat. This means our political fortunes are likely to rise.

The video in the post you linked doesn’t work.

As it happens, I can help you remember the specifics, but I’ll have to ask you to step into my wayback machine. To remember the gestalt at the time, listen to conservatives Scarborough and Smernikosh (sp) at about the 5 minute mark of the video I prepared and embedded in this October 2006 post.

“Keep in mind that no major Conservative legislation has ever gotten through Committee, passed the House, had 51 clear votes in the Senate, and been defeated by the filibuster. It just hasn’t happened. And it almost happened with the health care bill.” – nb

I am a little unclear on your point here. Are you comparing legislation defeated by filibuster or legislation “almost” defeated by filibuster? You need to keep your apples and oranges straight.

As to the rest – I said in the post I am sticking to my prognostication of a 2-3 seat pickup. I just don’t see this being the kind of “wave year” that Brownstein invokes unless the Dems crank up their corruption another notch or two before the election. It is always corruption that turns a political tide into a tsunami. While the blatant Democratic vote buying on Obamacare was pretty cynical and ugly, it still does not rise to the level of a Rostenkowski in ’94 or the Foley cover up by the Reps in ’06.

Dems with shot at a gain??? NFW. But if you believe it, let me know if you want a piece of this action. I’ll leave the betting window open until the end of the year.

And it almost happened with the health care bill.

Maddow and Klein don’t give a damn one way or the other about the party label D, thy care about the ideological label P. And most of the incumbent you mention are in trouble partly because they pissed us off. Dodd is too close to Wall Street Conservatives, Specter isn’t really one of us, and Lincoln was a problem during the public option negotiations. The Colorado guy has never been elected to anything, and will probably be knocked off by one of our folks in the primary. Harry Reid just hasn’t been as strong a leader as many Progressives want. It’s not his fault, but it’s still a problem for him.

Besides you’ve got a biased question there. The party would actually be better served by several of those primary opponents. Lincoln is unpopular and her opponent is the Lt. Governor. The CO guy’s not been elected to anything and his opponent is the Speaker of the State House. Specter’s opponent is a former Vice Admiral. Dodd’s in Connecticut.

OTOH likely Democratic pickups are mostly open seats. Ohio went for Obama, and it’s open. Missouri’s a swing state. NH is open. We’ve got a shot in KY. NC’s GOP Senator has been so ineffective that most polls have his name recognition under 50%.

In other words the Dem incumbent could lose all five seats Matthews mentioned, and make a two or three seat-net gain in the General.

I freely admit that’s a long shot. But it’s just as likely as the GOP picking up all five seats Matthews mentioned.

If the democrats propose to legitimately abolish the filibuster, that proposal is foolish, but it’s at least stupidity cut fair and square. Actually, I was just listening to a talking head on NPR last night, who whined about how we need to “restore” majority rule in the Senate, as the founders intended. When your reasoning starts with such gross ignorance of our Constitution and constitutional history, you’re pretty much bound to get it wrong. That kind of crude majoritarianism is always unattractive, becomes offensive when it is only wheeled out for partisan convenience, and is spectacularly inapt when applied to the Senate, a body that not only is not and never was representative of “the majority,” but which in fact created in part to serve as a counterweight against the majority.

Failing to learn the lessons of history may or may not have consequences, but failing to learn history, whether you grasp its lessons or not, will certainly end up making you look like a moron. So does changing sides on an issue as its partisan valences switch–as Paul Krugman and Jeff Sessions (to name but two) demonstrate.

The lack of fidelity to party principle was a complaint often heard from the GOP partisans when they were in the majority. It is probably just easier to maintain party discipline when a minority party in opposition.

Silly and naive? Perhaps. Also a fact.

dems these days are the de facto “not republicans”.

not to mention, there are only 58 of them.