Why Republicans Should Support Filibuster Reform
Posted at 11:45 a.m. on Dec. 4, 2012
With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) threatening to reform the filibuster at the start of the new Congress with a simple majority, Ramesh Ponnuru reminds Republicans that they will benefit from the reforms as well.
“When the federal government was small, the filibuster helped to keep it that way because it protects the status quo. If American politics ever changed so much that most legislation aimed to pare back government, however, the filibuster would protect the big-government status quo… With the passage of the health-care law, however, liberalism finally finished the project of building the American welfare state.”
“Liberals who want to grease the skids for legislation and conservatives who don’t are both betting that the next few decades will go better for the former than the latter. That may look like a good wager right now, but Harry Reid could one day find himself on the wrong end of it, and sooner than he thinks.”
