Mass Confusion

Yesterday's  victory for Massachusetts  Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has folks wringing their hands, trying to make sense of the senseless.  In the months since Ted Kennedy died, leaving his seat vacant, the general view was that of course the Democrats would retain this seat and with it their 60 seat majority in the Senate.

But politics is never an "of course" business and the Martha Coakley campaign, not to mention the national Democrats aiding her effort, should have known better.  And that's water under the bridge as of today, now that Scott Brown is the Senator-elect for the state of Massachusetts.

Brown's admission to the Senate cloakroom will not give the GOP a majority in the Senate.  It will give them 41 seats to the Democrat's 59 seat majority, a number that looks like a minority to every 4th grader in America.  But the 4th graders among us (not to mention the rest of the nation) don't understand the nonsense that is the filibuster.

For the better part of the last year, the Republicans have been playing filibuster possum, threatening to filibuster nearly every  Democratic-sponsored initiative in the Senate.  The idea of a prospective filibuster is for the minority party to thrown down and stop business in the Senate, thus ensuring that the majority party will negotiate and that the minority party has a real effect on legislation.  Historically, the filibuster is an infrequently-used tactic.  But not these days, when the GOP threatens to filibuster everything in the Senate.  Moreover, the Republicans haven't just been playing filibuster bingo to ensure that a few of their ideas get included in the Democratic legislation.  They've been playing filibuster with one goal: total obstruction, inspired by their the hope that the Obama Administration will fail in it efforts to right the ship of state and move us out of this recession.

The mainstream media hasn't called their bluff.  And, frankly, neither has the Democratic leadership in the Senate.  And now Harry Reid and company are reaping the reward.  One can only hope that our dysfunctional Senate, dysfunctional at the whim of a Republican minority, will now attract the attention (and ire...is it too much to hope for ire?) of the news media and the nation.

It's one thing for Republicans to expect their ideas to be included in legislation. They do have 41 seats in the Senate and they do represent a lot of folks (although, ahem, a minority lot of folks).  But it is quite another to offer no ideas at all and then sit back and hold our Congress hostage at a time when our nation most needs action.  The GOP's win-at-all-cost strategy may succeed.  But our nation will lose.