Keep the filibuster rule

In the event you have been sleeping through the last few weeks, you should be informed that the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is now over. A small group of Democratic senators voted with the Republican majority, overcame the Democratic-led filibuster in the Senate, and, for good and for ill, the government is back in business.

The debate that lingers has been largely driven by President Trump, who repeatedly called for the Republicans to end the filibuster once and for all. As the president sees things, the Senate’s filibuster rule is simply an obstacle that should be eliminated. I say it is an obstacle put there deliberately and I further argue that the removal of the filibuster is a decidedly unconservative proposal that would lead to disaster. That’s all.

Once upon a time, the Senate and the House both had filibuster rules that enabled members to delay legislation, sometimes leading to the defeat of that legislation. Though the word is strange, the principle is deeply conservative. In ancient Rome, Cato the Younger used his own version of the filibuster to prevent the passage of legislation. In the Senate of Rome, all legislation failed with the coming of darkness. Cato just talked until sundown and refused to yield. With darkness the legislation failed and senators went home to dinner. Cato went home satisfied that he had prevented disaster.

The House of Representatives ditched the filibuster early in its history, but the House was designed to be the chamber of energetic legislative action. The Senate, by contrast, was designed to be the brake on the hot passions of the House. In the Senate, every state stands equal and any senator can command the floor. The Senate was designed to slow things down. The filibuster is not mandated in the Constitution, but it has been an essential rule of the Senate. In older days, a “talking” filibuster was required. More recently, the filibuster works in the Senate by requiring 60 votes (a 3/5 majority) for any bill to advance to a vote. In most cases, no marathon-length speeches are necessary.

Let me be blunt. Conservatives depend on the filibuster and without it we would be living under very different circumstances. The conservative disposition calls for restraint when it comes to legislation. If the filibuster had not been in place, we would be facing disaster. To remove it would be to torpedo conservative aims and hand the Senate to the next Democratic majority, free to run roughshod toward progressivist goals.

Conservatives believe in the lessons of both history and mathematics, so let me give you a major dose of both. If legislation in the Senate can move forward with a simple majority, as in the House of Representatives, the Senate becomes little more than a second House with longer terms. The nightmare scenario is one in which there is no Senate filibuster and the Democrats control both chambers and the White House. The Democrats would win every vote, and nothing could stop a bare Democratic majority from passing whatever legislation it likes—and its increasingly radical base demands.

Now for the history part. Brace yourselves. I made a chart of every congress since Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. No less than 18 of those congresses, starting with the 73rd Congress in 1933, had Democrats in control of the House and the Senate and the White House. What about Republicans? Over the same period from 1933 until the present, Republicans had the clean sweep only four times. Want to get rid of the filibuster? Say hello to disaster.

Just take the issue of abortion. The Democrats have been kicking themselves ever since the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. Their base demands to know why the Democrats did not pass comprehensive abortion rights legislation when they were in total control. The filibuster is a major answer to the question. That same leftist base demands that the Democrats pledge to eliminate the filibuster once the party is in the majority once again, and that with the filibuster gone, and with Democrats once again in control of the House and the White House as well, they would be free to pass radical abortion laws and run the tables, so to speak, with progressivist legislation. Just imagine the LGBTQ avalanche to come.

Think it can’t happen? Without the filibuster, Democrats can run Congress like the British Parliament, where a simple majority can basically run the tables. A Democratic president would be only too glad to sign the leftist legislation. Think that’s unlikely? Remember, the Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate and the White House for no less than 36 years since Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration. Just imagine if they had held that control without the restraint of the filibuster in the Senate.

The filibuster can be frustrating. The recent Democratic filibuster was frustrating, and comes with consequences. But conservatives had better remember that, without the filibuster, we would be living in Nancy Pelosi’s America. When she was speaker of the House, she famously hated the filibuster rule in the Senate. But for the filibuster, the Democrats could have cleared the decks with their legislative priorities when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in the White House. Let that little nightmare focus your attention.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once said that the conservative mission was “to stand athwart history yelling stop.” Killing the filibuster would mean conservative surrender. The filibuster is one essential way of yelling stop.

For a counterpoint by Hunter Baker, see “The filibuster is failing us.”