Professor Stephen Bainbridge (a law professor at UCLA) points out, correctly, that “The filibuster is a profoundly conservative tool. It slows change by allowing a resolute minority to delay – to stand athwart history shouting stop. It ensures that change is driven not ‘merely by temporary advantage or popularity’ but by a substantial majority.” That, certainly, is conservatism as I understood it – the conservatism of Burke (who would probably have felt that today’s neoconservatives have more in common with Jacobins than with true conservatism).
But Bainbridge’s key point is this: “BTW, any honest conservative must admit that the only reason we’re having this debate over filibusters is because of Orin Hatch’s changes to the Judiciary Committee rules and procedures on matters like blue slips, hearings, and so on, which deprived the Democrats of the tactics that the GOP used to bottle up a lot of Clinton nominees in committee.”
Of coure this merely provokes the hard right into accusing him of being a traitor and allying himself with “Demo-Rats”. Yet another example of what Andrew Sullivan has described as the tension between “Conservatives of doubt” and “Conservatives of faith”.
(Via Sully – to whom I offer best wishes – see Me and my virus.)