So let’s warm up the crystal and see if I can peer into the future.
Let’s say that the Supreme Court upholds the ACA either in it’s entirety in a 5-4, or a more narrow ruling with something like a 6-3 split. (Sounds like bowling for precedents.)
The Republican base, energized by the need to repeal the ACA, recovers their enthusiasm, holds the House, takes the Senate and the White House in the trifecta of American Politics, but their hold on the senate is less than 60 votes.
What happens after that?
Well the Republican base demands that the House pass the repeal of the ACA, Romney says he will sign it, and the Bill goes to the Senate, where the Democrats filibuster it. ACA= tyranny and as tyranny cannot be allowed on a procedural trick, the Republican initiate their nuclear option and destroy the filibuster. The repeal passes on a party line vote, amid a storm in insults, shouting, and images of sick people without healthcare, and Romney signs it.
The filibuster once broken, even if the rules were changed for just one vote and then changed backed, is forever a dead letter. The Republicans, knowing that all power is fleeting, use the newly empowered government to pass tax cuts and changes along more party line votes.
What happens, when it must eventually occur, when the Democrats have the three institutions under their control? Of course they will pass the legislation they have long desired and wanted, using the same techniques with the same party line vote tallies.
This could also start the other way, ACA is struck down, and the Democrats hold the Senate and White House and regain the House. (Fairly unlikely I think.) Then blowing up the filibuster and on a party line vote they sweep into existence a single-payer system. Etc etc.
Of course, by that point, we no longer a system of stable laws and government as each change in power can lead to a whiplash of new laws, repeals, and changes controlled only by the whim of political passions.
This is not a good thing. This scares me.
The point is not that compromise is an absolute good, it is not, but rather that our system is designed as one where compromise is an essential feature. If we had a system where there was proportional representation, then this would not be an issue at all, the parties would better serve by being committed to unbending goals, but that is not our system.
Is partisanship, lack of compromise, and loss of moderate members really the problem with our legislature?
I remember plenty of ugly laws passed with the help of moderate legislators who choose party loyalty over the promises made to their own electorates: Speaker of the House Foley from 1994 comes to mind, as do the blue-dog Democrats of 2010.
Moderate is also the banner under which the worst earmarkers and pork-politics practitioners operated. Pork was the moderate path to success and longevity in the U.S. Congress. Compromise mainly involved mutual backscratching to loot the Treasury. It was good manners to vote for the other guys earmark because then he would vote for yours too.
Moderation has also often been the disguise used by politicians to conceal their true policy stances from the electorate. This isn’t always the case, but often enough that moderates have earned a bad reputation in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that moderation is the root of all evil, I’m only saying that moderation is not all that is good.
The problem is not just the filibuster it is the decreasing willingness of elected officials to buck their party and vote as individuals. You can cheer the kicking out of the RINOs but that also means fewer, and it looks like eventually none, Democrats voting in favor of what you want. Our system is built upon the idea that elected officials are willing to compromise. A word that is seen increasingly as an evil.
The stability of the American political system is not that dependent upon the filibuster rules of the Senate. The filibuster has changed over time too, the current rule is much looser than it was 100 years ago, yet the Republic still plugs along.
Should the filibuster disappear altogether, then so what? The republic still has basic limits in place such as the separation of powers, the bill of rights, and presidential term limits.
Plus it seems there is this mythology that the U.S. Senate is some kind of brake on expansion of government power. While in theory this might be so (leading some leading lights of liberaldom to propose radical restructuring of the Federal goverment and elimination of the Senate all in the name of “efficiency”) in fact the House has been the steadier institution. Perhaps members of the Senate, because of their long terms and assumed air of superiority, are more used to exercising power and therefore more comfortable with expanded power. As if they were born to rule?
If anything is a threat to American political stability it is the growth of the Federal regulatory state since 1932, abided by the dereliction of a cowed Supreme Court. FDR wanted what he wanted, and the constitution be damned.
The problem is the rule of law faded as the primary instrument of American law the U.S. Constitution is ignored instead of amended. It’s not as if amending the constitution is so hard either, it was done many times before FDR to meet changing times and changing needs. Since FDR we have the “living” constitution, where rule making power is handed off to unelected bureaucrats, regardless if it violates the constitution.