Obama Tailspin

[Lurker]

Nice... why discuss the topic when you can try to play gotcha!

First, during the Bush years when the Republicans controlled both chambers, the Democrats didn't abuse cloture votes. My outrage at the time was aimed at Bush who was proposing awful policy and the Republicans and handful of Democrats that enabled it. After the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2006 the Republicans started ramping up cloture votes. That caused confusion on my part since the only purpose was to protect Bush from embarrassing vetoes of popular legislation. Now that Obama is in the White House the abuse of the filibuster is preventing useful legislation (see Embars two critical examples) from passing.

Do you have anything to add to the actual topic at hand?

[Kulaf]

So basically you admit that you only now care about Senate rules because it might affect your parties ability to pass legislation knowing that they have lost the required supermajority.

And you want to go so far as to make it so only a simple majority is required to pass legislation in the Senate. I hope you feel that way when the axe swings the other way.

[Lurker]

I was explaining why it hadn't come up on the boards before, not that I only care now.

And imagine that, the Senate passing legislation by a simple majority just like every other legislative body in the world does, and as the Founders intended. The horrors.

[Kulaf]

It's been on the boards before. There was a large discussion when the Reps were trying to limit cloture on judicial nominations.

[Lurker]

That was probably during my year off.

Edit: I'll probably go back and read that though. It'll be interesting to see how the filibuster was viewed by people on these boards in 2005, back when the tactic was still uncommon and extreme.

[Kulaf]

Personally I would be in favor of going back to the original cloture voting rules. Make the minority have to work for their blockage.

[Ddrak]

The Dems used cloture in the senate during the Bush years. Not so much as a routine, but certainly against judicial nominations and other "key" pieces of legislation. The difference is the GOP had them fairly scared of being labelled as "for the terrorists" or some such thing when they voted against the President. I remember an awful lot of "don't question the President in wartime" crap happening.

Had the Dems the ability to organize as a bloc in the way the GOP does, you can bet they'd have used cloture a lot more. They just aren't as rigidly organized and single-minded though.

Dd