Paul Waldman on TAPPED reviews
the core imbalance that plagues the legislative process in Washington...the fact that the Republicans have changed the rules and not only suffered no consequences, but are actually benefiting.
If you're a Democrat, chances are that on more than a few occasions in the last few months, you've heard about the latest tactical maneuver from Republicans in Congress and said, "This time they've gone too far. Surely they'll pay a price for this latest outrage."
Maybe it was when they filibustered a defense-appropriations bill (not supporting our troops!). Or maybe it was when, just after the attempted Christmas bombing, they held up confirmation of the man President Barack Obama appointed to head the Transportation Safety Administration, leaving the agency leaderless. Or maybe it was the "Shelby Shakedown," when Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby put a "hold" on 70 administration appointees so he could get some pork for his home state. Or maybe it was the way they argued that trying terrorist suspects in civilian court made Obama soft on evildoers, when the Bush administration did the same thing hundreds of times.
Every society has its rules and its norms. The former come with penalties, but the latter persist only so long as the community has some kind of informal enforcement mechanism. We used to have laws against adultery, but today marital fidelity is a norm -- you can't be imprisoned for violating it, but if it is revealed, you may suffer some public shaming. In Washington, it turns out, many of the norms people thought existed can be violated without cost.
When this session of Congress started, Republicans said to themselves something like the following: It's true that the minority in the Senate has never tried to filibuster everything, but what's to stop us? Democrats may complain about obstructionism, but to most of the Americans who pay only passing attention to politics, it just looks as if "Washington" can't pass anything -- not that one party is at fault. So the minimal cost of looking obstructionist is far outweighed by the political benefit of keeping the Democrats from accomplishing anything.
He concludes:
What we are left with is a situation in which one party is assiduously adhering to the norms it believes are still in place, while the other party long ago concluded that norms are meant to be ignored. Republicans aren't so much the "party of no"; they're the party of "yes we can" -- yes we can filibuster everything, yes we can put holds on nominees for no good reason, yes we can argue in the most dishonest ways imaginable (see panels, death), yes we can be as hypocritical as we like. The Democrats, on the other hand, continue to be the party of "maybe we shouldn't."
