The Road to Pax Americana Runs Through Congress
Many in Washington have begun to speak the language of war. Republicans tell us we are fighting for the Constitution, for the culture, and for the future of the country...
The Pax Americana will come after victory is achieved, not before it...
For most of modern American history, the kind of command it takes to achieve a true and lasting political revolution has required overwhelming legislative power. The mid-1960s are the clearest example of this...
The Democrats did not waste the moment. With their supermajority secured, they moved quickly to construct a new American regime. The Great Society was not a loose collection of social programs. It was a sophisticated project aimed at permanently uprooting the American Founding by expanding federal authority over education, health care, immigration, culture, and economic life... Democrats governed like a party that understood both the rarity of the opportunity and the danger of hesitation...
I have seen firsthand the useful fiction the Senate filibuster operates under. On paper, legislation passes by a simple majority. But in practice, it requires 60 votes due to cloture. The result is a chamber that requires majoritarianism, but operates under supermajority rule.
Under a 60-vote threshold, winning control of the Senate does not translate into governing authority. It merely permits the initiation of negotiations with a minority that has every incentive to obstruct, delay, and wait it out until the next election. And because a simple majority alone cannot accomplish much, perverse political coalitions begin to form, therefore making party power nominal and control illusory...
he filibuster does not change the vote count required to pass legislation; it simply grants the minority a procedural veto that prevents bills from ever reaching a vote for final passage without their demands being included...
Abolishing the filibuster would reverse that order by shifting leverage back inside the Republican conference rather than surrendering it to the Democrats...
If conservatives truly think that the current regime is badly misaligned with the common good and the will of the American people, then the logic of reform eventually leads to abolishing the Senate filibuster...
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