It seems that Professor Bainbridge and I have pretty similar takes on the issue:
Will somebody please get these folks some cheese to go with their whine? I find these reactions not only short-sighted but also surprisingly unconservative. They reflect a willingness to put possible short-term partisan gain (and I emphasize the word possible) over both principle and long-term advantage…
They aren’t conservative. They aren’t even the same reactionary extremists that used to be the fringe of the Republican party ( I like reactionaries- they aren’t running around proposing bullshit, they are trying to stop it). The extrem right in Congress is a group of radicals with a big government, and decidedly unconservative, agenda.
The filibuster is a profoundly conservative tool. It slows change by allowing a resolute minority to delay – to stand athwart history shouting stop. It ensures that change is driven not “merely by temporary advantage or popularity” but by a substantial majority. Is it any wonder that it has usually been liberals who want to change or abolish the filibuster rule?
Proponents of the “nuclear option” claim to believe that abolishing the filibuster could be limited to judicial nominations. It’s a coin flip as to whether this is naive or disingenuous. It’s a slippery slope to abolishing the filibuster as to Presidential nominations or even legislation. Would the GOP be tempted to abolish the filibuster if necessary to put John Bolton at the UN? Or to ram through social security reform? Even if the GOP resisted that temptation, what happens the next time the Democrats control the Senate? A GOP-established legislative and institutional precedent for abolishing the filibuster as to judicial nominations would make it all that much easier for the Democrats to do the same as to nominations or legislation.
They don’t care, and they are being disingenuous. No need to flip a coin. At any rate, read the whole thing.
*** Update ***
One more time for the slow. I find the notion that Republicans are pursuing the ‘nuclear option’ out of deference to the Constitution to be completely laughable. Period.
This group of phonies on both sides of the aisle have shown time and time again that they are willing to not only shit all over the Constitution, but to wipe with it when they are done. The idea that they are now pursuing this option for the sanctity of the Constitution is utter nonsene. They are doing it because they want their judges confirmed.
If Republicans were so damned concerned with the Constitution, they may have been able to make a persuasive argument when they were in the minority all those years. Instead, they were quite content to use the rules in place to blue-slip and kill legions of Clinton appointees, all without a whit of concern for the Constitution or any mention of a President having a right to have his nominees voted on.
That they have managed to convince some in the wingnut base to adopt this language and attitude may be one thing, so when you see them huffing and puffing in the blogosphere about the Constitution, you know why. But it doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t mean the Senators pushing this really give two hoots in hell about the Constitution, either.
This was about power, pure and simple. Not, as some would have you believe, the Constitution.