The NAACP is lobbying to preserve the Senate's filibuster in Washington these days. What's next for the civil rights group? A campaign encouraging Southern pride in the Confederate flag? A fundraising drive to build more of those odious monuments to Robert E. Lee?
I am not a big fan of George W. Bush's judicial picks either, but don't insult my intelligence -- and I won't insult yours -- by pretending that the filibuster is the cornerstone of American democracy, the guarantor of all our cherished liberties.
The filibuster, from the Dutch word for pirate, is a parliamentary move that allows a minority of senators to prevent the chamber from voting on a measure by indefinitely extending debate. The Senate filibuster dates back to the early 19th century, but the obstructionist tactic will always be associated with the efforts of the Senate's Southern Dixiecrats to block civil rights legislation in the 20th century. The effort was so successful for so long, as Robert Caro vividly recounts in his "Master of the Senate" tome on Lyndon B. Johnson, that the Senate was widely referred to as "the South's revenge for Gettysburg." The filibuster kept the federal government from combating racial lynchings, the poll tax and plenty of other outrages, which is why the NAACP's Washington office and liberal voices across the country used to rail against the filibuster as the ultimate perversion of American democracy.
It's now a perversion of history for the NAACP and these other liberal voices to champion the filibuster because it is temporarily convenient to do so. Like the Republicans' hypocritical attack on states' rights in the Schiavo case or in the debates over gay marriage, the liberal defense of the filibuster is an example of how devalued intellectual honesty and consistency have become in Washington.
In our frenzied 24/7 news cycle, everything is tactical, of the moment. Depending on today's correlation of forces, you can defend the filibuster, even if you decried it yesterday and may do so again tomorrow. OK, I know, I know, silly me for being disappointed by such rank hypocrisy in politics.
Still, the liberal People for the American Way's pro-filibuster TV ads are a breathtaking assault on the intelligence of viewers. They feature a "common sense" Republican -- a firefighter, no less -- arguing that even his guys in Washington need some moderating by the minority, that "America works best when no one party has absolute power" and that our democracy works best when "both parties are speaking out and being heard." That's quite a spin on a practice that allows the hijacking of a legislature so that no one can have a say because there cannot be a vote.
