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Chafee, Alito, and the Filibuster

Alon Levy's picture

Submitted by Alon Levy on January 30, 2006 - 3:48pm.

Via Majikthise: Chafee said he'll vote against Alito. Obviously, this is good news, mainly since it shows moderate Republicans can crack under pressure, so if Chafee can do it, so can Specter, Snowe, and Collins. In particular, if more than 6 or 7 Republicans are turned, then the DNC might be able to pressure Democrats to vote against the confirmation.

Commenters on Lindsay's thread said that Chafee was just pretending to be moderate because he voted for cloture, i.e. for a straight up-or-down vote. But the people who adopt a filibuster-or-death attitude get two crucial things wrong: one, there is no way a filibuster will get 40 votes; and two, the modern filibuster is a way for a Senate minority to get its way once in a while instead of never. A majority yielding to a filibuster in effect says, "Okay, this one time you can have your way, since we get ours 80% of the time." When the majority is as passionate as the minority about the issue, it will destroy the Senate before yielding to a filibuster.

The attitude that Chafee is secretly anti-choice because he won't filibuster is no different from the attitude some warbloggers express that if you don't support torture, you support the terrorists. The facts that there's some other issue at stake - human rights in the case of torture, and legal tradition in the case of a filibuster - and that torture/a filibuster won't work go in one ear and out the other of such people.

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