Yesterday's CRUSHING DEFEAT of the Republican filibuster got me to thinking. They can bluster and bellow, but at the end of the day they have to be completely united, and I think that will be their undoing.
Do I think that the highly disciplined right will fall apart, no, I think that yesterday's event is an anomaly rather than a blueprint for the future. No, I think we should make them filibuster, threats of one aren't enough anymore.
We are facing down one of the most important problems of our day, as we argue about this political philosophy vs. that political philosophy, people are dying, in the wealthiest nation on earth, because of lack of adequate medical care. We have 60 seats in the Senate but we are terrified of a filibuster, why?
On the face of it it would stop health care reform in its tracks, but would it really? Let's put some Republican on TeeVee every night reading a phone book for a couple of days. Let's take whatever Democratic turncoat that won't vote for cloture and run him through the 24 hour news cycle for a few days. That is how you mobilize your base, that is how you shore up support, you put it right into the American peoples's faces, that Republicans would rather stand up there reading a phone book then have any kind of adult discussion on reform. Make them the literal embodiment of obstructionism.
Then we run ads showing them doing whatever ridiculous thing they have to do to filibuster, we make filibuster the difficult thing that it is, not just an idle threat you can throw around. We stop other legislation, we ground the system to a halt until reform gets an up or down vote. We can play non-stop archive footage of them whining for an up or down vote on their bullshit legislation.
We force them to put up or shut up. The Republicans are a bunch of mealy mouth little bullies who for far too long have been taken far too seriously. We need to stand up to these fuckers and let them know that they need to back up their bluster, and they need to be willing to pay the fucking price.
My bet is that the price for a filibuster on legislation that will help all Americans will be a long walk in the political wilderness and a new appreciation for the whigs.