I know this isn’t as exciting as burning terror cars or oiled-up shrimping grounds, but here’s a few words about Financial Reform. Late last Wednesday night, as Senate Democrats were threatening to pull out the cots and force Republicans to stay all night to actively filibuster Chris Dodd’s Financial Regulation Reform bill, Republicans finally relented and gave up the fight (or at least, the fight before the fight before the fight). Before the Motion to Proceed to Debate could be brought up for a fourth time, Senate Republicans unanimously agreed to a voice vote to proceed. Bear in mind, this vote was not a vote on the bill itself. In fact, there is no bill yet. At least not anything close to a final version. The votes filibustered were to allow the bill to come to the floor to be debated and amended.
So the question becomes, why did they filibuster this to begin with, and what is Mitch McConnell’s long-term plan? (OK, two questions.) As for the raison de filibuster, Jonathan Bernstein has a few possibilities in mind:
1. It’s part of a long-term strategy to waste Senate floor time, in order to reduce the capacity of the Senate to get anything done. That does make some sense; eating up three days this week could, at least possibly, prevent some judicial nominee from being confirmed later this year. On the other hand, the Democrats still have unused floor hours (Mondays, Fridays, nights, weekends), so they’re not running up against any real limits yet.
2. The Republicans are terrified of the talk show hosts and conservative bloggers, who are demanding maximal resistance to the dread socialist Kenyan Obama whether the resistance makes any sense or not.
3. Mitch McConnell is actually an incompetent hack and has no idea what he’s doing.
My personal opinion is a combination of 2 and 3. (And incidentally, I think I’ll now always think of the President as the Dread Kenyan Obama, kind of like the Dread Pirate Roberts.) I think the GOP caucus has backed their way into a situation where knee-jerk opposition is the default position, even if it does not make any particular strategic sense. As Jonathan Chait pointed out early last week, everybody knew McConnell was bluffing, and that he would not be able to hold his caucus together very long. Still, there they were, voting to obstruct debate on the bill, mere weeks after decrying the “backroom deals” that they perceived to have been at the heart of the health care reform bill.
So, what is the GOP’s ultimate goal here? To scuttle any bill, as they attempted with health care? To try to get a more conservative bill, as they actually did achieve with health care, despite themselves? In the end, I think it will come down to how they answer one simple question: Are you with the people, or are you with your corporate backers? I, for one, am not sure which side Republicans will ultimately come down on. Anybody else have any guesses as to what the long-term GOP strategy is here?