McArdle is your typical Washington media elitist. She's gone to the right schools and worked for all the right media outlets and I'm sure gets invites to the right cocktail parties. I'm sure she lives in a neighborhood where there is lots of organic this and overpriced that. So it should come as no surprise that she, being eminently representative of today's press elite, would start out a piece
like this:
As it happens, I like the filibuster. I’m fine with its broad use against as many laws as the minority likes. I like minorities being able to hold the majority back.
There is nothing in the Constitution at all about the minority holding back the majority. That's not the system the founders designed. What they designed were checks and balances, separation of powers. But on the question of majority rule, they were quite clear: the majority rules. Sometimes simple majorities, sometimes super majorities. But always, the majority rules. in contrast, she likes dysfunction. I digress.
Here's the real meat of her argument:
As I understand it, there is about a 0% chance that Democrats will retake the House in 2014, which means that Republicans already have quite an efficient veto over any legislation they might like to pass. Meanwhile, there’s about a 70% chance that Republicans will control the White House, the House, and the Senate come January 2017. Without the filibuster in place, Republicans could do a lot of damage to programs that Democrats like. That seems an expensive risk to run in order to get some presidential nominees through, however mad you are about GOP obstructionism.
But if that happens, the Republicans could go nuclear themselves in 2017, you may say. And that’s certainly a risk. But in fact, I think they will be as skittish about it as the Democrats have so far proven. Congressional control has proven stunningly evanescent since the Republicans first took back the House in 1994. It’s no fun getting rid of the filibuster and then ending up back in the minority a year later.
This is a person who is obviously paying almost no close attention to the 21st Century Republican Party, a common disease among the Washington elite. She thinks the Republican Party actually wants to govern the country, a proposition unsupported by no facts in any Republican Party in any state in the nation or in Washington.
Let me propose to Megan what's really happening: Republicans will end the filibuster no matter what Democrats do. Because if there is one thing I know about the GOP base, it is that it wont let a petty thing like rules or laws get in the way of their agenda. If Republicans can use the filibuster to keep dumb ass Democrats from getting anything done, they will. When a Republican gets power, he will use it to the fullest extent possible. We've seen them out in the states disregarding rules and procedure whenever it suits them. Hell, they've even passed laws, had the people repeal them through referendum, and then went and passed them again. They don't care about tomorrow's election, until tomorrow. They strike while the iron is hot. They just don't care. You think people like that are going to hamstring themselves over some petty Senate traditions? Only Democrats are that stupid.
I forgive McArdle her lack of insight. It is a common malady among the Washington Press Elite because to speak honestly about the Republicans would imply that one isn't being "fair." The false sense of even-handedness is important to one's career and social station in the Washington pecking order. You've got to be one of those people to get a cable news gig or a Sunday show chair. If you want to be all Andrea Mitchell, you must make sure you've got the right invites to meet the right people so you can not ask them any serious questions. If McArdle stood out from a sea of real, worn shoe-leather investigative Washington journalists as uniquely myopic, I'd give her the business. If she was unique among a pool of media people who care more about the truth than about their own careers, I'd really let her have it. But she's all too common. Sadly.