Good Riddance to the Filibuster

Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957

The Republican majority in the senate recently confirmed Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch after the majority changed the rules to do away with the filibuster of Supreme Court justices. The move to end the filibuster will continue until an important enough piece of legislation is passed by the Republicans and filibustered by the Democrats; then the filibuster will finally be gone for good. I for one, am happy about this. I'm not happy about Gorsuch or the wave of terrible legislation that will eventually become law, but the filibuster itself is one of the more reprehensible legislative tricks allowed in our government.

The filibuster is a procedural technique allowing a single senator or senators to ramble on endlessly to prevent a vote on legislation that has been passed by the majority. The filibuster was first used in 1837 and in 1917 a rule called cloture was introduced. Cloture was the ability for a larger majority to end a filibuster and it originally required a vote of two-thirds and then three-fifths in 1975. The existence of the filibuster and the rules of our senate get even more bizarre: Cloture can be eliminated by a simple majority vote, but as I just said, cloture can only be invoked with 60 votes or a "supermajority" but the rules can be changed with merely a majority vote. Does anyone else find this whole process a little odd?

The filibuster itself is mentioned nowhere is the Constitution and while the Constitution states that the senate can set its own rules, it also says in the Ninth Amendment "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people". Now in fairness, the Ninth Amendment could be interpreted to make a great number of things unconstitutional, but since the Constitution lays out a few very specific scenarios in which more than a majority vote is needed and passing routine legislation and making appointments isn't one of them, I think it's certainly fair to question the constitutionality of the filibuster.

Constitutionality aside, how is any of this remotely democratic?* Shouldn't a majority be able to rule as a majority? I think so. 

Ultimately, elections have consequences and the majority that wins out should be able to rule with constraints, but those constraints shouldn't include simply finding an angry minority to blather on about something as to prevent legislation or an appointment favored by the elected majority. With a majority in congress, the presidency, the elimination of the filibuster, and a majority on the Supreme Court, the Republicans own everything that happens. That's the way it should be.

*Some of you may correctly point out that the senate isn't democratic. This is true of course, but that's another post.