Bad deals

This is why I think the Senate deal is bad news.

The Senate was carefully set up to make it hard to shanghi. Each state, no matter how large or small gets 2 Senators. This keeps populated states from being able to totally bully rural states.
There are also safeguards set up by the CONSTITUTION that prevent the majority party from running over the minority party. This safeguard is more commonly known as the fillabuster.

Of course, the majority party always dislikes the fillabuster. Using it, just a few senators from a minority party can gum up the grand plans of the majority party - for good or bad. When faced with such a prospect, the usual solution is compramise. When nominations are fillabustered, the usual course is to find another nomination that is less objectional. I think this is a good system.

But it is not a good enough system for the current republican party. No - they want total control. A handful of judical nominations, about 5%, have been fillabustered by democrats. This means that 95% have not. As a result, the republican party brought up the prospect of a rule change preventing any fillabuster - the so called nuclear option.

The republican party claims that the nominations "deserve an up or down vote". In reality, they do not "deserve" anything! No nominee is entitled to a vote. They might get a vote, or they might get blocked. This is all they deserve.

The republicans claimed that the democrats are obstructionists, because they have blocked 5% of the nominations. Compare that to 1 out of 3 Clinton nominees being blocked by the republicans during the height of the "republican revolution". 5% VS 33%, and the democrats are obstuctionists. Talk about fuzzy math!

Also, consider what the same republican party would be saying IF the democrats tried to change the rules when they were the party in power. What would today's consertives be saying in that case? Would they support the idea, like they do now?

The democrats have NO SPINE! They should not have backed down on this one. They should have allowed Bill Frist to invoke the nuclear option, so America could see what the GOP version of the way things should be really is. One party with all the power, kind of like the communist party in Cuba or the nazi party in WWII Germany. I think that in this case, reasonable people in America would see the danger in one party having all the power, and would have voted out the republicans in 2006.

On the other hand, voters might have agreed with such an action, in which case it would be a signal that our nation was on a decline, spiriling downward to facism or something else just as bad or worse.

The minority party, no matter which party that is, NEEDS TO HAVE SOME POWER! My opinion is that America needs a viable third party, so that the power base can be split 3 ways. This would make bills even harder to pass through congress, and would make overturning a veto almost impossible. In such a case the people would win, less bills means less laws which can only mean one thing - MORE FREEDOM!

Of course, the right wingers will disagree. To them, as long as they consolidate their power the Constitution can be used as toilet paper. Taking over the Senate? No problem! As long as Bush gets all the nominations he wants. Activist judges? Those are fine, so long as they are republican activists.

The only good thing would be when the democrats took back the power. Then we could all watch the same republicans who wanted to change the rules cry a river because they were shut out.