Some people have questioned this, but I really am a conservative – in the classic small government sense. So much so that my son is named Jefferson in honor of Thomas Jefferson, who George Will once described as the patron saint of limited government.
Which is why I have serious reservations about Republican threats to amend Senate rules regarding filibusters in order to approve a few judicial nominees. One of the first lines of defense against an activist – and hence suffocating – government is to make it difficult to act (it’s no coincidence that “act” is the root word of “activist”).
The filibuster does just that. It prevents the most extreme ideas of the majority from being carried out. And I am sorry, but there are some extreme ideas on both sides of the political aisle. There are Democrats who want an activist government that legislates equality of income and outcomes. The name for that is socialism. No thanks.
On the Republican side, there are those who want an activist government that has greater say in how we live our lives morally and has less respect for our privacy. There are a few words I can think of to describe that form of government, and I say no thanks to that as well.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about the backgrounds of the judicial nominees who are being blocked by Democratic threats of a Senate filibuster. But I do know that the Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if the tables were turned and the Democrats were threatening to eliminate the filibuster as a tactical maneuver.
That, more than anything, is what I would keep in mind if I were a Senate Republican – the day will come when they are once again in the minority. It may seem hard to fathom, but the pendulum swings both ways, particularly after it has swung too far in one direction. Ironically, the filibuster helps keep that pendulum from the most extreme swings, so keeping it may actually help preserve the Republicans’ majority.
But if it doesn’t, I want the Republicans to have the filibuster option. Back when Bill Clinton was first elected, Senator Bob Dole said the president was going to have a chaperone. The filibuster made that possible.
The Republicans argue that as the majority party, they are simply carrying out the will of the people. But I would remind them, as I would the Democrats if they were in power, that they represent everyone, not just those who voted for them. Elections may be winner-take-all, but governing is not.
Therefore, Republicans would be wise to remember that while their victory was broad, it was not especially deep. President Bush received less than 51 percent of the vote. Republican House candidates garnered barely 50.1 percent of all votes nationwide and over the last three elections, covering all Senate seats, Republicans actually received over two million fewer votes than Democratic candidates.
Bottom line, when used judiciously (no pun intended), the filibuster serves the wishes of those 49 plus percent of Americans whose interests are not represented by the majority. It is one of the beauties of our American system of government – majority rule with minority rights. Our system of checks and balances is designed to ensure that no one person, party or agenda can gain too much power at the expense of others. And if that means government can’t do everything it wants, that’s just fine with me.
