Why Republicans are Filibustering Everything

Kevin Drum highlights this graphic put together by McClatchy Newspapers which underscores the unprecedented degree to which the GOP minority in the Senate has relied on the filibuster to scuttle legislation:

I disagree, however, with Kevin's explanation as to why the GOP has been resorting to the filibuster so often. He writes:

It's also worth noting why Republicans are filibustering everything in sight. It's not because it's the only way they have of blocking legislation they dislike. After all, a Republican is president. The real reason is a desperate desire to kill popular legislation quietly (the press doesn't spend much time reporting on routine filibusters) rather than force President Bush to kill popular legislation in full public view (the press does report on presidential vetoes). The problem is that the public tends to be on the side of Democrats when domestic issues actually get some attention, so Republicans benefit by keeping their disagreements as low key as possible. The last thing they need is a bunch of high-profile vetoes that would make it crystal clear exactly what they're fighting against.

Though I tend to agree with Kevin about most things, I think he's very wrong about this. Bush is already extraordinarily unpopular, and he's not running for anything. Under such circumstances, Republicans in Congress should be happy to rely on presidential vetoes to thwart popular legislation. Bush would essentially be doing their dirty work for them and providing valuable political cover to vulnerable Republicans in Congress, who could then vote in favor of the legislation without worrying about it actually becoming law.

The reason that isn't happening is because the Republican party is pursuing an even more cynical strategy. The GOP caucus, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is determined to block any and all significant legislation from even making it to the president's desk. McConnell's goal is to deny the Democrats any legislative achievements whatsoever, to make them look incompetent and unwilling to deliver on their campaign promises. Here's a recent McConnell quote:

The surveys indicate that the broad public is disapproving of them [the Democratic Congress] as well, and there are a reasonable number of Independent-type voters who are not particularly ideologically driven, who just want to see us do things – you know, accomplish things. Those people aren’t happy too, so they’re losing both ways. They’re not only not satisfying the hard left, but they’re disappointing the independents who took a chance on them last November.”

McConnell clearly thinks that if he can keep the Democratically-led Congress from accomplishing anything, that the people who "took a chance" on the Democrats in the last election will get fed up and return to the GOP. That's why he brings up Congress's historically low approval ratings every chance he gets.

McConnell is intentionally blocking popular legislation so he can then turn around and accuse the Democrats of not accomplishing anything. He's intentionally driving down Congressional approval ratings and then pointing to those ratings as evidence that the Democrats don't deserve to be in control. To quote a line from The Outlaw Josie Wales: "Senator: Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

The reason McConnell thinks he can get away this is because the press has so far done a terrible job of explaining to the public why legislation isn't getting through the Senate. As Josh Marshall has been tirelessly documenting, the word "filibuster" has all but disappeared from the vocabularies of most reporters. Most stories simply report that a bill failed to make it through the Senate or that the Democrats weren't able to muster enough votes. When the news is reported in this way, the fact that a GOP minority is blocking the legislation is obscured; the blame for the failure to get things done is attributed to Congress as a whole, not to the Republican minority in the Senate.

Despite this consistently terrible reporting, however, I think McConnell's strategy will ultimately backfire. He may well succeed in driving Congressional approval ratings down to near-zero, but I just don't see how that will translate into GOP gains in the next election. As I've noted before, these low Congressional approval ratings don't mean that the American people preferred the previous Republican-controlled Congress and are experiencing some sort of buyer's remorse.

These polls reflect significant voter disenchantment, to be sure, but it is not the sort of disenchantment that is likely to lead people who voted Democratic in the last election to cross over and vote Republican in the next. McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership are deluding themselves if they think otherwise. After all, people who are upset that Congress has not done enough to end the debacle in Iraq or pass ethics reform or increase the minimum wage are unlikely in the extreme to defect to the GOP. Ultimately, it will be Republicans like McConnell who pay the political price.