Daily Astorian: Gordon Smith is a "dependable Republican enabler"

"Senate May Be Ruined Forever"
Editorial, The Daily Astorian
8/18/08

GOP’s filibusters are like threatening an atomic weapon in every dispute

American government has been exceptionally perverted over the past eight years. Vestiges of this malfeasance will remain well beyond the regime of another president or a different party. Accepted standards in national or international affairs have been badly warped

Even the legislative branch will enter a long recovery from a Republican ethos in which an obsession with total victory crowded out compromise. That Republican choice may change the United States Senate forever.

Following the 2004 election, Senate Republicans threatened or launched filibusters repeatedly to stop Democratic legislation. If you want to know why Democrats have not been able to move legislation, it's the filibuster.

Here's what's wrong with that Republican tactic. For 200 years, the filibuster - or extended debate, as it's called in the Senate rules - was used very sparingly. It was typically used by the Southern states to forestall civil rights legislation. In 1964, the Southern filibuster was broken and a landmark Civil Rights Act was enacted.

Because the Senate's membership is not proportional to population, it is set up to protect minority interests. A sparsely populated state such as South Dakota has as many Senate votes as New York or California. The filibuster was allowed as an extraordinary tactic for the minority.

The GOP mistake has been to make the filibuster a common, everyday legislative weapon, instead of the ultimate weapon. It's like using a handgun to settle a household argument or threatening to use an atomic bomb in every military situation.

Otherwise intelligent senators have gone along with this game. Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith knows history as well as any of his colleagues. He knows where this leads. But he's chosen to be a dependable Republican enabler of the filibuster gambit.

In the short term, GOP senators have dug themselves a hole. If Democrats enlarge their majority, they will have good reason to ignore Republican complaints. In the long term, the genie is out of the bottle. And this begs a difficult question. Will a successive generation of senators have the capacity and the temperance to re-learn the restraint that prevailed for two centuries?

Posted August 18, 2008
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