Posted on 04/06/2026 7:37:37 AM PDT by JayGalt
The Senate filibuster is often romanticized as a noble safeguard of minority rights, a procedural guardrail that forces consensus and slows the passions of majorities.
Yet the actual history of the filibuster—its accidental creation, its use by factional minorities, and its long record of blocking popular and essential legislation—tells a very different story.
From the beginning, the filibuster has been less a principled protection of deliberation than a tool for thwarting the democratic process, empowering small groups of senators to override the will of the electorate and frustrate the functioning of representative government.
Its history demonstrates not a tradition worth preserving, but a procedural mistake that has repeatedly distorted the Senate’s constitutional role.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
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The filibuster used to be forcing the minority to get up and talk out all their objections, and once this minority has exhausted all their arguments, finally yields the floor, and a vote taken, majority, no matter how thin, prevails.
The difficulty is in that cloture was substituted for an actual filibuster, and the margin was set artificially high, in hopes that the dispute would be strangled, so the Senate could consider other matters, which in turn could also be strangled. I suppose this is more “efficient”.
Regardless of it’s origins or status, it will be dumped by Dems if they retake the Senate.
The “Old Guard” Uniparty is done. It’s now a group of fringe radicals vs America.
Dump it and use it to MAGA advantage.
Dems have tried to dump it before and have stated they will again.
Thune is just a taller McConell.
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This article is shameful in many of its conclusions.
We don’t have a filibuster problem, nobody’s stood up in the senate and read the phonebook in a generation.
We need to restore the filibuster.
I couldn’t agree more. Set it back to talking filibuster and have the spine to sit out the left or Nuke it.
A fairly good synopsis.
Let’s abolish cloture! That’s actually the real problem.
They should be forced to stand up and do things like read the phonebook if they actually want a filibuster.
The Filibuster saved our country in 21 and 22. The list of things the rats were going to do is a nightmare come to life.
The thing is no one will stop them if they get another chance, so I don’t think we have a choice now. At the very least we need to narrow the scope if it enough to get legislation through that the overwhelming majority of the people want.
The Left has become a big tent for every splinter faction in the US. There are elements in there that are a minority OF a minority... OF an even smaller minority.
When they get together they pass themselves off as a unified group. Then they wield way more influence that's out of all proportion to their actual numbers or what any one of them could claim, each on their own.
Unfortunately, the media insists on treating that tribe of disaffected losers as a legitimate and coherent political entity. I have read some very badly written history books that take a better approach to sorting out political movements than our so called "MSM" does!
There has to be a full and final accounting of the very sloppy and dishonest way the present American media does its work and I hope I live long enough to enjoy the shame they will have to endure!!
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The filibuster being used is not the “real filibuster”. However that point has been made. I find the discussion informative not in the least disgraceful.
This article focuses on the reality of misuse.
Unlike constitutional features such as bicameralism or the presidential veto, the filibuster was never conceived by the Founders. In fact, the Framers expressly warned against requiring supermajorities for ordinary legislation because such requirements paralyze government and transfer power to narrow factions.
In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton wrote that supermajority rules “reverse the fundamental principle of free government” because they give “a small number… a negative upon the majority.””
American media does its work and I hope I live long enough to enjoy the shame they will have to endure!!
The media is one of those fringe radical groups you mention!
You might be shocked to learn that the very existence of the Senate an anti-democratic design.
Much is made of ours being a republic, not a democracy, but of course that is a false dichotomy, since our government is a combination of the two. The House was designed to be a direct conveyor of the popular will, while the Senate, given its longer terms and its indirect selection process by state legislatures, was to impede the popular will (not dissimilar to how the House of Lords came to function.)
It is not unnatural or ahistorical for the Senate to cling to its republican and anti-democratic founding principles. The filibuster is manifestation of that heritage.
That is an interesting insight. I would need to do a lot more research to agree or disagree but there is much heuristic value.
The filibuster fits with our ideal federalism.
It is not for nothing that, on very major issues, for which the filibuster is one such rule, along with others, where greater consensus (60% majorities) are needed to get something approved. Such rules help to keep us from succumbing to the “tyranny of majority” the founders of our Republic and our federalism were worried about. It was that same such tyranny of the majority - and the separation and limits of powers of government - that recognition of our rights was so important - that not even a majority could (should be allowed) to abridge them.
Congress was structured so that competing interests could block each other, by design, preventing legislation that really lacked any super consensus, or they could - be forced to - compromise if a matter was absolutely necessary to be resolved.
No the filibuster is not in the Constitution, but it fits with much else in the founders governmental design.
Either the filibuster should be made part of the Constitution, or it should be eliminated and all the legislation Trump needs to do a proper job should be enacted.
Two Republicans could drop a bill in the hoppers proposing a filibuster constitutional amendment be sent to the states with a 05/30/2026 limit for ratification.
bump
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