FILIBUSTER FLIP-FLOPA Study in Democrat Hypocrisy

What a difference a decade and a different administration make. In 1995, during the Clinton administration, nineteen senators, all of them Democrats, went on record in support of ending the use of filibusters. In that same year, Senators Tom Harkin and Joseph Lieberman actually crafted the so-called Harkin-Lieberman Proposal that would have amended Senate rules to overcome any legislative or executive filibuster, effectively rendering the filibuster useless as a legislative tool. At the time, the New York Times roared its approval in a piece titled "Time to Retire the Filibuster." It read, in part:

"In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition so disgusted Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, that he is now willing to forgo easy retribution and drastically limit the filibuster. Hooray for him."

Nine of the senators who backed the 1995 effort to limit the filibuster; Lieberman, Kennedy, Boxer, Feingold, Bingaman, Kerry, Lautenberg, Sarbanes and Harkin still serve and all nine now sing exactly the opposite tune.

Incapable of any viable counter-proposal to the Bush agenda, their party devoid of ideas and ideals, they now cling to the filibuster as their best hope of countering the current administration.

This is ironic and fitting since it was two Democrats, segregationists Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd, who mastered the use of the filibuster as a purely obstructive device by implementing them in opposing civil rights legislation in the late 50's and early 60's.

Thurmond holds the record for the longest filibuster in history; 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to a 1957 civil rights bill and Byrd spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.