Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I've written many times about how the two major parties exchange scripts about things like filibusters depending on which party is in control of which part of the government. In the 90s, it was the Democrats who wanted to get rid of the filibuster and the Republicans who were outraged - outraged! - at the very thought of prohibiting such a vital democratic tool.
After Bush's election in 2000, the Republicans were suddenly appalled by the use of the filibuster and Democrats suddenly discovered the wonders of that procedure, both sides waxing eloquent in the service of the very position they had been denying for so long. And now that Obama is in the White House, they have now flipped scripts again. But Joe Lieberman, a man of neither party, has taken this to a whole new level.
As Sam Stein notes, he wanted the filibuster outlawed in 1994. Now he's promising to filibuster the health care reform bill. A few quotes from Lieberman back then:
"And I think the filibuster has become not only in reality an obstacle to accomplishment here, but it also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today.""But I do want to say that the Republicans were not the only perpetrators of filibuster gridlock, there were occasions when Democrats did it as well. And the long and the short of it is that the abuse of the filibuster was bipartisan and so its demise should be bipartisan as well."
"The whole process of individual senators being able to hold up legislation, which in a sense is an extension of the filibuster because the hold has been understood in one way to be a threat to filibuster -- it's just unfair."
"I'm very proud to be standing here with Tom as two Democrats saying that we're going to begin this fight, because we've just been stung by the filibuster for a period of years, and even though the tables have now turned, it doesn't make it right for us to use this instrument that we so vilified."
Amazing how quickly that goes out the window when your biggest political contributors really, really want a bill to be killed.
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It's funny because the vast majority of nutmeggers favor a public option. But since American voters are a pack of slack-jawed mouth-breathers, Biden will hold his seat for the next two hundred years.
Posted by: Brandon | November 4, 2009 9:36 AM
Re Brandon
I think that Mr. Brandon means Lieberman.
Posted by: SLC | November 4, 2009 9:49 AM
That's a week of insomnia for ya...
Posted by: Brandon | November 4, 2009 10:08 AM
Normally I'd object to comparing what someone said 15 years ago to what they say today. But in this case we don't have the excuse of having matured over that period (Lieberman wasn't young 15 years ago), nor do we have the justification of significantly changed circumstances (Congress is functioning pretty much the same way now as it did then).
So all that leaves is hypocrisy.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 4, 2009 11:39 AM
If this were a single example of the hypocrisy of Lieberman I would put it down to a changing opinion based on time. Instead this guy is really a complete self-interested tool. It's hard to believe that he was the Democratic VP candidate just 9 years ago. The guy is like an alcoholic, adulterous, or an abusive husband in his relationship with the Democrats. Just when they begin to think he is a legitimate member of the party he goes out, gets drunk, boffs someone else, comes home and beats the shit out of them.
I thought it was a mistake for them to take him back into the fold after campaigning for McCain in '08, unfortunately I was proven right. The ultra-right screams about RINOs in the GOP over ideology, this guy actually is a DINO. He doesn't care about what is best for the country, he doesn't care about what is best for his constituents or even what they want, he cares only about what keeps him in office, who paid for his campaign bills, etc.
Posted by: dogmeatib | November 4, 2009 12:00 PM
Mr. Lieberman's failings notwithstanding, could it be that this is all showing how valuable the filibuster really is? I mean, when Republicans were in the majority in both houses and in the white house they could have passed anything they wanted, up to and including constitutional amendments (of course I know they would have had to be ratified). The fact that they did get so much damaging stuff, like the Patriot Act, passed is testament to the weakness of the Democratic party, at least WRT civil liberties.
Without the filibuster we would have been subject to even more ideological whiplash than we are now.
Don't get me wrong, I support universal health care, and think that a public option, with the government program imposing low costs on providers, is essential. But if you have a scant majority now and could so easily get that passed, and it takes 5 to 10 years to see the benefits, then before it can work, the other side takes control with well-scripted whining and the whole thing gets dismantled.
The extreme polarization of politics these days is the enemy, as I see it, and the filibuster helps mitigate that.
Posted by: BaldApe | November 4, 2009 12:14 PM
I'd just like to see one very small change made to the filibuster rules... Let them revert back to when the Senators filibustering actually had to stand there and *talk* to maintain the filibuster.
Posted by: W. H. Heydt | November 4, 2009 1:03 PM
Baldape--Yes, yes, and yes.
W. H. Heydt--Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 4, 2009 1:05 PM
W. H. Heydt -- absolutely.
I think it takes stength of conscience and courage of convictions to keep talking like that. It's not just a procedural move and no one would do it more than once unless it was of vital importance to them. It needs to be the absolute last weapon and it needs to be hard to use.
Posted by: katydid13 | November 4, 2009 1:24 PM
I also agree that if they threaten to filibuster they should have to actually do it.
Posted by: BaldApe | November 4, 2009 2:28 PM
I don't think you can talk about the filibuster without first talking about how it's use has evolved over time.
Personally, I don't see a real problem with it as it has historically been used -- in which a tiny fraction of bills were filibustered by a unified, if large, minority.
That worked just fine with the minority was rarely unified -- when both parties covered a wide swathe of the political spectrum, and generally were not unified so much by partisan label but by idealogical concepts.
On the other hand, the filibuster does NOT work when one or both party simply works in lock-step, regardless of the merits of the bill. You end up with something like California, where nothing can be done -- simply because to achieve something means the other guys "win".
This just makes Lieberman's hypocrisy worse, in my mind. He was against the filibuster when it was used rarely (perhaps 30 or so times a year), but a devoted fan of it when it is used 100+ times a year. The other way around is at least defensible -- as a seldom used tool to prevent the tyranny of the majority, I can understand. As the first tool out of the bucket, to effectively rewrite the rules to require 60 votes to pass a bill, that is something else.
Posted by: Morat20 | November 4, 2009 2:43 PM
I like the idea of a cloture vote without having to maintain a speaking speaking on the floor of the Senate. If you can't get 60 votes than either your bill, a party, or the political process is broken.
Like Bald Ape stated, imagine the damage to the country if all the GOP needed was 51 votes. That was how they got Bush's tax cuts given the budget procedure has a method to flank the filibuster (though what passes must expire after a certain period - IIRC it's 10 years).
Currently I see a broken GOP and a broken Sen. Majority Leader. I do not understand why Sen. Schumer keeps talking up Sen. Reid. There is no way you are actually leading if members of your own caucus are willing or even threatening to employ procedural rules against their own caucus. Reid needs to grow a pair or the Democratic caucus needs to find a new leader. Voters need to vote for qualified candidates.
If I were in Rep. Kantor's district I would never vote for him again. Last night he claimed that Virginians voted for a Republican for Governor yesterday because they were rejecting "Obama's economy". Chris Matthews called him out on that whopper a couple of times but Kantor refused to concede. With integrity like that being voted into office we deserve what ails us.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 4, 2009 5:25 PM
Harry Reid is being rewarded for years of being on his knees under conference tables in the senate. Joe Lieberman is an unprincipled p.o.s. who should be stripped of every committee job he has and shunned.
Posted by: democommie | November 5, 2009 8:17 AM