Cloture Knucklebuster

Since 1968, when the minority party in the United State Senate successfully used the filibuster to block the ascension of Associate Justice Abe Fortas to the chief's chair on the Supreme Court, the cloture rules have been employed 34 times to block judicial and cabinet/sub-cabinet Presidential nominations. Of those, 26 were nominated by Democratic Presidents, and eight by Republican Presidents. Cloture was use most effectively against Bill Clinton, who saw 24 of his nominees blocked by the traditional Senate tactic of the strong, obstinate minority. President Reagan comes in a distant second, with six nominees held up by the minority party. Since Fortas - a political insider from the South with close ties to President Johnson viewed as deeply flawed by the Republican opposition (this sounds familiar) - the rules of cloture have been weakened but retained by a series of majority leaders of both parties. It only requires 60 Senators to close off debate and bring about a vote these days, instead of the old 67. Funnily enough, the GOP tally in the Senate stands at 55 with a couple of wobbly centrists and mavericks bringing Majority Leader Bill Frist's lock-step votes down to around 51, and the upcoming mid-term elections throwing that 55-45 lead up into the air. But Frist knows far better than these Senate leaders from the past: Mike Mansfield, Robert Byrd, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Tom Daschle, and Trent Lott. The cloture rule must go. People of faith demand it, and they're the perceived base for Frist's 2008 run for the Presidency. This is the week, folks - a great week for American politics in the true sense of the word. Dramatic. Vitriolic. Telling. This week will give you a true sense of the ethics and American spirit of Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. It will also say a lot about the future of the Republican Party, which - from time to time - occasionally finds itself in the minority in the Senate and desirous of a traditional tactic to block what it considers the more radical notions of its opposition. Pay attention.

Comments

[John Ballard]

Very good comments.
I blogged this post tonight.
There are probably less than a few thousand people in America who have ever heard the word consociational and yet that is the most critical component of the balancing act we call Democracy in the Middle East (notably Lebanon) and for which Americans in uniform are dying.
The filibuster is a consociational feature of American politics which will be more important in our future than it has been in our past. Those who wish to kill it are tinkering with unintended consequences that they do not really expect.
I think there are enough bright minds to understand, but sometimes I wonder.

[Tom K]

Isn't "consociational" just a recasting of the doctrine of concurrent majorities?

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/Calhoun_PoliticalPhilosophy.asp

[John Ballard]

Isn't "consociational" just a recasting of the doctrine of concurrent majorities?

Probably. I'm neither an expert nor deeply schooled on either concept. My exposure to the term was entirely accidental and I set off to looking for what it meant. After a lot of googling I found Jonathan Edelstein, a bright young legal mind whose intellect is breathtaking. He is producing some of the most inciteful commentary I have found on emerging forms of representative governments, which I take to mean the same thing as "Democracies" when mentioned in the current lexicon.

http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/archives/028022.html

His five-part analysis of current Lebanese politics and future scenarios is worth taking the time to study. He says, among other things:

I believe that the Lebanese political system will continue to be consociational for as long as the development of a national consciousness is incomplete, and probably for some time after. Consociationalism is the default in countries, like Lebanon, where the primary focuses of identity and loyalty are subgroups within the nation-state rather than the nation itself. Such focuses, moreover, can exist even alongside an emerging national overlay, in much the same way as European nationalisms continue to exist despite the growing role of the EU as a focus of identity.

Consociationalism is often regarded as flawed because it runs counter to the Enlightenment ideals of rule by the majority and the individual as the fundamental bearer of rights within the nation, but in countries with strong group identities, simple majority rule can be an oppressive rather than a democratic concept. Where majorities are formed around ethnic, religious or other social groups rather than cross-sectorial ideological factions, majority rule without constraints translates to rule for the benefit of the dominant group. One has only to look to the theoretically unitary states of post-colonial Africa and Asia, many of which are effectively controlled by the majority ethnic group or a politically dominant minority, to see how the Enlightenment ideal can break down in practice.

The term does not properly apply to a historically established nation, but the concept was, as you pointed out, a critical part of our political development, albeit a palliative for slavery until the issue could be resolved at a later date...if the Civil War can be called "resolving" the issue. Even without the filibuster the Senate is itself a "consociational" feature of our government. But that august body does not have to share the role of "advise and concent" with their brothers in the House.