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Over time, competing forces will come into play. More obstruction by Republicans on a variety of issues could lead to increased frustration, leading Democrats who had opposed removing the filibuster to the government. less support its weakening. But as the midterm elections approach, some senators may become less willing to engage in a fight that reeks of partisanship.
“As you get closer to midterm, people get more nervous about anything that could be considered controversial,” Ornstein said.
A brief history
First introduced on the eve of the Civil War by John Calhoun, a staunchly pro-slavery senator from South Carolina, filibuster was widely used during the Jim Crow era by segregationists who sought to prevent the introduction of very popular civil rights laws. location. Nationwide polls from the 1930s to the 1950s showed that most Americans supported anti-lynching legislation, the abolition of election taxes, and other similar laws – but Dixiecrat Senators from the segregated South used the systematic obstruction to end the legislation.
After the civil rights movement, the crackdown on filibuster led to the 1975 reforms; in the years that followed, he remained the main domain of Southern Conservative senators like James Allen and Jesse Helms, who were “considered outlaws, almost outcasts among their colleagues,” said Jentleson, the calling “absolutely the Ted Cruz of their time”.
“If the Republican leaders of the day could have been successful, they would have arrested these guys and kicked them out of the party,” he said. “But it turns out that they were sort of the ancestors of their party leadership.”
In his book, Jentleson writes that it may not be a coincidence that the GOP has bent over to use filibuster after the rise of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president. McConnell, who said in 2010 that his main goal was to make sure Obama was “a single-term president,” began using the 60-vote threshold to prevent nearly all laws from passing.
“Before McConnell, no leader had attempted to deploy it against almost anything that came before the Senate,” Jentleson said. “It turned out that Republicans were able to easily dodge blame – and voters held the ruling party responsible for doing nothing, and particularly held Obama for breaking his promise to get out.” deadlock in Washington. ”
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