The End of the Judicial Filibuster -- At Last

As former judicial affairs counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and one-time chairman of the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters, today is a good day.?The first and last partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination means that Senate elections will be more clearly a referendum on the Supreme Court, and the toxicity that has choked the Senate over judicial nominations since 2001 will now mostly end.??????

The fact that our fundamental instrument of government includes seven instances, not including confirmations, where a super majority is required would naturally mean nothing to Democrat Minority Leader Charles Schumer, who frequently admits that he has never practiced law in his life.

Thankfully, few on the right have waxed romantic, like the New York Times, about the ageless filibuster, in large part because its pedigree is far from noble. While senators have always found ways to delay, until 1806 the Senate ended debates with the approval of a simple majority. For the next 100 years, senators spent more time trying to return to that democratic practice than filibustering anything.?

That includes the great orator Henry Clay. In 1841, he tried twice to restore ending debate by a simple majority vote. Between 1850 and 1893, there were nine attempts to restore a simple majority vote to end debate.?In 1917, the Senate adopted “cloture” to end dilatory debate, and in 1949, arguably extended use of cloture to nominations.?Even so, from 1925 to 1995, there were 24 bipartisan attempts to restore simple majority cloture.?In fact, for most of the 20th Century, the filibuster saw only hostile reduction, mostly by Democrats.

And now 16 years of Democrat overreaching has returned us to the framers intent with regard to all nominations.??A happy day!