A fellow blogger, Duane Graham, recently published a blog titled “A Peculiar Institution” and then a shortened guest column ran on Sunday (Globe, Nov. 29). As with much of what Duane writes, his key point seems, at least to me, that conservatives are (always?) “bad” and liberals “good.” He published a lot of anecdotal evidence and quotes to make his point in his blog.
After reading his blog, I contacted the Office of the Senate historian to find some facts. What I really wanted to know was: Of the history of filibusters going back to about 1850, how many had been initiated by liberals and how many by conservatives? Bottom line is, such a record does not exist.
I sent Duane that information and he replied, “There’d be no cloture votes if there were no filibusters, right?” Well Duane, not according to the Senate historian. She said, “The presence or absence of cloture attempts cannot be taken as a reliable guide to the presence or absence of a filibuster.” She went on to say: “In recent times, conversely, the Senate leadership has increasingly utilized cloture as a routine tool to manage the flow of business, even in the absence of any apparent filibuster.”
The Senate historian also provided a link to the Congressional Research Service (2003) Report on filibusters. It said: “Since 1980, neither party has ever held 60 percent of all the seats in the Senate. Thus, as long as this situation persists, every bill that the Senate passes must enjoy at least a minimal degree of bipartisan acceptance.”
That service also provided the following historical data for 1919 to the present. Cloture was invoked 368 times.
Without a lot more research it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of the 368 times cloture was in fact invoked was managing the flow of business or striking down a “real” filibuster and most importantly, whether the invocation of cloture was driven by Democrats or Republicans.
With all of this information available to him, Duane concluded in his blog (but not included in the Sunday blog excerpt): “But we shouldn’t be surprised at conservative efforts to thwart America’s march toward a more perfect union.”
Draw your own conclusions from that above, if you will. I will only suggest to Duane that seeking bipartisanship seems like a great way “toward a more perfect union.”
Anson Burlingame lives in Joplin. He writes a blog for The Joplin Globe that can be read at www.joplinglobe.com.
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Guest columnist Anson Burlingame: The other side of filibusters
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