Interesting article at Consortium News, by Robert Parry, The GOP’s Filibuster Hypocrisy, revisits the confirmation of Samuel Allito to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006. When Democrats threatened to filibuster Allito’s confirmation, Republicans threatened to use “the nuclear option,” and by a majority vote change the Senate rules and eliminate the right to filibuster on any matter.

In response to this threat, “moderate” Democratic senators joined a bipartisan group called the “Gang of 14,” and agreed to not filibuster the Allito nomination. Eventually Allito was confirmed 58 – 42, which means if all those who considered Allito a poor choice had backed the filibuster, Allito would not have been confirmed.

Parry writes, “Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads, it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress – and ‘filibuster’ was a dirty word. It was usually coupled with ‘obstructionist’ amid demands that any of George W. Bush’s proposals deserved ‘an up-or-down vote.’

“Yet now, with the Democrats holding the White House and Congress, the Republicans and the Washington press corps have come to view the filibuster fondly, as a valued American tradition, a time-honored part of a healthy legislative process. Today, it’s seen as a good thing that Democrats must muster 60 votes in the Senate to pass almost anything.”

Parry writes that after the election in 2006, “Republicans did a flip-flop on the filibuster, discovering the high principles behind the tactic. The GOP used the filibuster routinely in 2007 and 2008 to block Democratic initiatives, especially any challenges to Bush’s expansive claims of executive authority.

“Typical of the modern Washington press corps, its leading voices changed, too, joining the Republican chorus hailing the filibuster as an honored tradition of democracy and finding value in the need for the Democrats to muster 60 Senate votes to pass any significant bill. Today, the press corps continues in that pattern, forgetting the GOP’s earlier contempt for the filibuster and treating its use by the Republican minority against the stimulus bill as normal.”

consortiumnews.com

Robert Reich on his blog explains, “Why Republicans Won’t Support the Stimulus.” According to Reich, the Republicans are banding together as a deliberate political strategy aimed at the 2010 elections.

Reich explains, “Yesterday, while sitting across from Newt Gingrich on George Stephanopoulos’s Sunday morning television show, 1994 came roaring back into my head. Gingrich, you remember, turned that midterm election into a national referendum about Bill Clinton’s leadership…. Because House and Senate Republicans had kept remarkable unity in opposing Clinton at almost every turn, Gingrich in the election of 1994 could claim that and the Republican Party offered a clear alternative, and had earned the chance to control Congress.”

Reich says that the economy is in such an enormous hole that, “Even if everything goes as well as possible and the stimulus and next round of bank bailouts work perfectly, under the best of circumstances — assuming the stimulus is big enough to jump-start the economy and the next bank bailout big enough to get credit moving — most Americans won’t feel much better than they do now by November, 2010.”

But Reich is worried that the stimulus package will not be nearly big enough to solve the problems in our economy. He worries that the bank bailout will be ineffective. Reich comes close to predicting that by November 2010 the economy will actually be worse than it is today.

Reich says, “Republicans don’t want their fingerprints on the stimulus bill or the next bank bailout because they plan to make the midterm election of 2010 a national referendum on Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. They know that by then the economy will still appear sufficiently weak that they can dub the entire Obama effort a failure — even if the economy would have been far worse without it, even if the economy is beginning to turn around. They’ll say “he wanted more government spending, and we said no, but we didn’t have the votes. Elect us and we’ll turn the economy around by cutting taxes and getting government out of the private sector.”

“Obama believes Republicans will eventually embrace bipartisanship. I hope he’s right but I fear he’s wrong. They want to take back Congress the way Newt Gingrich retook the House (and helped Republicans retake the Senate) in 1994 — with hellfire and brimstone. Once in control of Congress, they’ll be able to block Obama’s big initiatives on health care and the environment, stop any Supreme Court nominees, and set up their own candidate for the White House in 2012.”