I’ve been waffling back and forth lately on the concept of senate filibusters. Though I think they’re anti-senate in nature, I think the current extremism of the GOP leadership calls for a “fight fire with fire” approach. Today’s Slate has two great articles on either side of the filibuster debate, but Timothy Noah’s great anti-filibuster piece actually changed my mind (again). This is the line that did it :

[T]he filibuster is fundamentally a “conservative instrument,” because it’s usually liberals who want the government to do things and conservatives who want it not to do things.

So why do I support the filibuster again? Because the traditional liberal/conservative dichotomy doesn’t work anymore.

Since 1994’s “Contract on America” (if not earlier), conservatives seen the government more as a tool that can be used to further their agendas. They’re smart enough to realize that voters want their representatives to do something, so the idea that conservatives generally want the government to not do things died once the Gingrich posse strolled into Washington. Sure, deregulation¹ was a big part of their plans, but the truth about the GOP majority’s goals of blocking progressive reform was generally hidden by their proactive legislative agenda.

But even if you grant that the Republicans during the Clinton years were dedicated to shrinking the size of the government, it all changed once Bush was “elected” in 2000. The GOP that wanted to “starve the beast” a few years ago has decided to overfeed the beast and hope it has a heart attack. Most Republicans don’t even bother pretending that they want to shrink the size of the government, now that they know they can get away with exploding the size of our deficit and giving away billions of dollars to their most enthusiastic supporters. As a result, many real conservatives have backed away from what Andrew Sullivan calls “Bush’s nanny-state, expensive, big government conservatism”.

Which leads us back to what the Democrats should do. Personally, I think the filibuster is an awful rule that cripples the legislature at the whims of the minority. At the same time though, the Republican party has shamelessly used the filibuster to block reforms that we take for granted these days. While I think the political pendulum is bound to swing back in our direction soon, the fewer messes we have to clean up once that day comes, the better.

So when it comes to filibustering judicial nominees, tax “reform”, or the dismantling of social security, I say “go for it”. But be careful how you use this parliamentary roadblock. Just as the Republicans found success in actively pursuing their legislative goals, the Democrats should be very careful to avoid being labeled obstructionists. If the public thinks the Democrats are more interested in stopping the Republicans than in passing their own agenda, then it’ll be a loooonnnng time before we’re back in charge.

^{1 : I prefer the term “decriminalization”, since that’s essentially what deregulation is; changing the laws to encourage behavior that we’d previously decided should be illegal.}