Republican fluster over filibuster

“This is a place where the gap between Republicans in the 202 area code and Republicans in every other area code are totally on opposite pages,” said a GOP strategist who is active in the 2016 campaign. “Republicans in Washington fear what might happen if we break the filibuster and lose. Republicans everywhere else fear what they know will happen if we don’t.”

Republican voters are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, concerned for the children’s future, and above all, frustrated with Washington. They want action. They aren’t in the mood for arguments about the Senate’s role as the “cooling saucer” that protects minority rights and slows the march toward bigger government. Warnings that Republicans could soon be back in the minority, or that President Obama is likely to veto partisan, conservative legislation, ring hollow.

After watching Sen. Harry Reid, then the majority leader, manipulate parliamentary rules to push Obamacare through the Senate in 2010 with less than 60 votes; after watching the Nevada Democrat invoke the “nuclear option” in 2013, essentially breaking Senate rules to change the rules in order to block the minority’s ability to filibuster executive branch nominees and enabling President Obama to jam his appointees through the confirmation process over GOP objections, conservatives want blood.

But Senate Republicans are resisting. On Tuesday, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee delivered a presentation during the GOP’s weekly caucus lunch reminding his colleagues that Democrats since World War II have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress 22 years, Republicans only six. Interviews with veteran and freshmen GOP senators revealed little appetite to dump the filibuster, even two years from how should they hold the majority and win the presidency.

“I understand the emotion out there. But remember, anything that can be undone by a majority this year can be redone by a majority next year. And so, you have this yo-yo impact with the federal government, and that’s not what the Founders had in mind,” said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a career businessman until his election last year. “What this does, it requires us to get together, debate the issues, and actually compromise.”

“People are told that somehow if we stand up to Obama we can succeed. And what they’re not being told is, suppose that we even got it passed, and the president vetoes, we do not have votes under any scenario to override a veto. So it’s a little bit disingenuous to say that we’re not fighting the good fight. We can’t win that fight,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., added, responding to criticism from his party’s presidential contenders.

The filibuster is a parliamentary procedure written into the Senate rulebook in the early 1800s, and not a Constitutional directive. Historically, it was used with intermittent frequency. But the filibuster has become such a staple of the chamber in the last two decades, wielded aggressively by both Democratic and Republican minorities to blunt the power of the majority caucus, that virtually no legislation clears without a 60-vote super majority of senators.

Until two years ago, presidential appointments and non-Supreme Court judicial nominees that require Senate confirmation were also regularly held up. But Reid, blaming Republicans for abusing the filibuster, changed the Senate rules with the support of only a simple majority of Democrats, rather than the vote of 67 members as required under the chamber’s official guidelines. Republicans were outraged, and retaliated by obstructing legislation even more.

Nine months into the first full GOP Congress in eight years, Republicans and party activists are grousing again, this time over Democratic filibusters that have stymied conservative priorities, which lately included killing Obama’s deal with Iran to limit the Islamic regime’s nuclear weapons program. Democrats also are expected to block GOP legislation to redirect funding for Planned Parenthood to other women’s health programs following revelations about the organization’s harvesting of fetal body parts.

“Will the Senate Republicans — they still have time — are they willing to use the nuclear option, meaning get rid of the filibusters, stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power?” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said last week, in an exchange with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, during a presidential debate broadcast by CNN. “We won the Senate. We won the House. What was the point of winning those chambers if we’re not going to do anything with them?”

“I wish Republicans in D.C. had half the fight of the Senate Democrats to get rid of Obamacare, to defund Planned Parenthood,” Jindal added.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is an institutionalist and adamant protector of the filibuster, which he views as an extension of the chamber’s power and that which sets it apart from the House, which functions strictly according to majority-rule. The Kentucky Republican would particularly oppose changing Senate rules through the nuclear option.

Republican operatives who monitor Capitol Hill say that the changes Reid made that make it easier for White House nominees to be confirmed could relieve pressure on a GOP majority if the next president is a Republican. Party insiders wouldn’t rule out a build up of political pressure on Senate Republicans that could lead them to invoke the nuclear option and remove the 60-vote threshold on legislation. But they said there are enough parliamentary tools available, such as the budget reconciliation process, that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Other Republicans figure that a GOP president is likely to view the legislative process differently than they did as a candidate. But they concede, blaming Reid, that it remains possible given the palpable frustration of GOP voters.

“I suspect that the perspective of a president probably changes from the perspective of a primary candidate. But I think that Harry Reid has made the filibuster and the Senate in general extremely vulnerable by his actions of the last two years,” a veteran Republican strategist said.

Disclosure: The author’s wife worked as an advisor to Scott Walker.