Filibuster...democrat style

Publisher's note:  Imre Beke is not a name you might be familiar with; however he is among the few that can take very little and build it into much.  He is a very bright, down to earth guy, an IT genius, a dad, a Patriot, a radio talk show host, and the sort of individual I am proud to call my friend.  

As you will see by the following article, he is also a very astute political thinker, and whether you agree with him or not, he has the ability to grab your attention as he very skillfully presents his case on this very critical issue.  

It is my distinct privilege and pleasure to introduce Mr. Imre Beke to the readers of The Patriots Press.

Imre Beke:  The history of the Senate is the story of a body which - in the world's most democratic and open society - is singularly undemocratic.

When the Constitution was framed, the Senate was created as a body which represented not the people of the United States but the Governments of the individual States. In this way, although the Constitution made Federal laws superior to State laws, the States had - collectively speaking - veto power over the passage of Federal law. In order for a Federal law to be enacted, you had to have agreement between the majority of the Representatives of the People of the country (in the House), the majority of the States (by way of the Senate) and the country's Chief Executive.

This positioned the States as co-equal with the Federal Government, which made the accrual of centralized power as a form of tyranny over the People all but impossible.

Moreover, the States had a special way of stopping the passage of legislation which conflicted with the interests of one or more of their number. That tool was called the filibuster. Basically, any single Senator could speak as long as he wanted to without interruption by anyone. Nobody could take the floor from him under any circumstances. He could yield the floor to others who were helping him with the filibuster but that was voluntary and he always got the floor back.

In this way, any one Senator could stop a piece of legislation dead in its tracks.

Although the word "filibuster" was first used to describe the procedure in 1853, the use of the institution goes back to ancient Rome. Ironically, one of the first attempts to end filibusters using methods which were less than democratic was when Julius Caesar - who would later become absolute ruler of the Roman Empire, transforming it from a republic to what was essentially a dictatorship - had one of his rivals jailed in order to end a filibuster. The tactic backfired and Caesar did not get his way but his ruthlessness only grew worse until he eventually personified absolute power.

Those who believed in centralized national power subjected the institution of the Senate to a plethora of attacks over the past two centuries and then some in order to break down the influence the States - especially smaller States - had in obstructing unbridled Federal authority.

In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was passed and ratified, which stripped the State Legislatures of their role in electing the US Senate, thus ending 124 years of a Government in which the central power and the States were co-equal partners. Passage took place during the 62nd Congress, with an overwhelming Democrat majority in the House and a close to even split in the Senate.

In 1917, a Democrat dominated Senate changed its rules such that - for the first time - Senators had a way to end a filibuster. Under the new cloture rule, when 2/3 of the Senate concurred, a filibuster would be closed. For the first 46 years of the new institution of cloture, the Senate only managed to apply it a total of five times.

The 2/3 majority rule for cloture remained in place until 1975, when the Senate - again having a strong Democrat majority - amended it and lowered the threshold to 3/5.

Today, the Democrats have continued their long tradition of attacking the unique nature of the Senate. They voted to amend the House Rules of the US Senate such that cloture on filibusters of the approval of officers and judges now only requires a simple majority of the Senate. Clearly, Senate Democrats are far more concerned with the accrual of Party power than with preserving the unique character of the Senate or the fact that the Senate's various institutions are designed to be obstructionist. The way the Senate was selected before the Seventeenth Amendment was to allow the States to obstruct the passage of overreaching Federal laws. The fact that every State - large and small - had equal suffrage in the Senate was put into place in order to give small States the same say in Federal laws and to obstruct the larger States in forcing their will onto smaller States. The filibuster was designed to allow a single Senator to obstruct passage of any law or other Act of the Senate.

The Senate is - by nature and original design - an obstructionist institution. This makes it highly inconvenient to those who desire a strengthened central Federal Government. Accordingly, centralizers have spent the better part of the past two centuries and beyond finding ways to erode the obstructionist nature of the Senate.

Today's Senate vote is yet another step in the Statists' war to make the extraordinary institution the Senate once was into something decidedly unremarkable, into something utterly ordinary. The vote was almost perfectly Party line. All GOP Senators voted against the new rule while all but three Democrats voted for it.

One of the Democrat opponents of the rule, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) is no friend to US Conservatives. Yet, today he proved the old maxim that even a broken clock is right twice a day. He also showed what others have observed of him in the past. Like him or not, Levin tends to be consistent. Once he advocates for a principle, he does not allow Party interests to induce him to violate that principle.

In order to pass the rule today, the Senate had to play fast and loose with its own procedural rules. Under Senate Rules, cloture against a filibuster of a Rule change can only be invoked by a 2/3 vote, one of the few exceptions to the lower 3/5 threshold. Yet, the US Senate today chose to ignore that rule. Instead, Democrats sought a "ruling from the Chair" which stated that under the prevailing rules, a majority of 60 votes was required to accept a nomination. The Senate has the option of overruling any ruling from the Chair with a simple majority. By doing so in this case, Senate Democrats essentially amended the Rules of the Senate without living up to the procedures set forth for doing so.

Sen. Levin released a statement arguing that Senate Democrats were permanently harming the Senate:

"Changing the rules, in violation of the rules, by a simple majority vote is not a one-time action," he cautioned. "If a Senate majority demonstrates it can make such a change once, there are no rules that bind a majority, and all future majorities will feel free to exercise the same power, not just on judges and executive appointments but on legislation."

And that is exactly the point. The Democrats' war on the nature of the Senate is far from over. President Obama made it clear in his own statement today that he opposes the filibuster in all cases:

"All too often we've seen a single senator or a handful of senators choose to abuse arcane procedural tactics to unilaterally block bipartisan compromises or to prevent well-qualified, patriotic Americans from filling critical positions of public service in our system of government... It's harmed our economy, and it's been harmful to our democracy, and it's brought us to the point where a simple majority vote no longer seems to be sufficient for anything, even routine business through what is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body.... A deliberate and determined effort to obstruct everything, no matter what the merits, just to refight the result of an election is not normal, and for the sake of future generations, we can't let it become normal."

This statement was a shot across the bow. It was a reframing of the filibuster, making it seem as if it is both "arcane" and being used in a radically different manner than it had been throughout the history of our Nation. Neither characterization is even remotely accurate. It ignores the fact that it is not Congress' duty to simply pass laws. It is Congress' duty to pass laws which are good and necessary and to refuse to pass laws which are harmful and feckless. In order to ensure both sides of that duty, our Founding Fathers created an institution which was capable of enacting laws but was also endowed with tools to be used specifically to obstruct.

Democrats today attack obstructionism as being harmful to the Nation. The truth - no matter how inconvenient they may deem it to be - is that obstructionism plays a major role in not only keeping America running but in protecting the rights and freedoms of individual Americans.

Good fences make good neighbors. The Democrats have just torn down a very good fence in order to allow their herds to run free on someone else's ranch.