{"id":91423,"date":"2021-03-24T11:16:33","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T11:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/03\/filibuster-senate-majority-minority-rule-thune\/"},"modified":"2021-03-24T11:19:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T11:19:21","slug":"the-senate-means-minority-rule-even-without-the-filibuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/24\/the-senate-means-minority-rule-even-without-the-filibuster\/","title":{"rendered":"The Senate Means Minority Rule Even Without the Filibuster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Yes, we should abolish the filibuster. But even a filibuster-free Senate would give 16 percent of the population power to stop legislation. Simply put, the Senate is an antidemocratic institution.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Senate minority whip John Thune (R-SD), flanked by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks to the media after the Republican leaders' weekly lunch at the US Capitol on March 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Tasos Katopodis \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As everyone from\u00a0President Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0to conservative Democratic Sen.\u00a0Joe Manchin<\/a> to liberal groups now pushes to reform the Senate\u2019s rules, the defense of the filibuster goes something like this: by design, our nation is a republic, not a direct democracy, and therefore we must create institutional obstacles to empower a minority of Americans to prevent the whims of the majority from being too hastily enshrined in legislation. By this logic, we must keep the Senate\u2019s cloture rule, which requires sixty of the Senate\u2019s one hundred members to end a filibuster and move a bill to a vote.<\/p>\n

Those who make this case seem to love sounding like erudite constitutional scholars steeped in the grandeur of American history, and they purport to be pluralists worrying about minority rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cLetting the majority do everything it wants to is not what the Founders had in mind,\u201d said Senate Republican whip John Thune in a floor speech<\/a> defending the filibuster this week. \u201cThe Founders recognized that it wasn\u2019t just kings who could be tyrants. They knew majorities could be tyrants, too, and that a majority, if unchecked, could trample the rights of the minority.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. So the Founders .\u2009.\u2009. created the Senate as a check on the House of Representatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

But an inconvenient fact undermines Thune\u2019s argument and should set pluralists at ease: even if the filibuster were eliminated and bills could advance on a simple majority vote, the Senate would still be giving a minority of the American population enough Senate representation to block legislation supported by the majority of the country.<\/p>\n

In the debate over the filibuster, then, the question is not whether you believe the majority should rule. Instead, the question is this: How small a minority should be given legislative veto power over the rest of the country?<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

The Cooling Saucer<\/h2>\n \n

Back in\u00a02010<\/a>, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell was not wrong when he said one of the Founders was \u201cquoted as saying at the constitutional convention the Senate was going to be like the saucer under the tea cup, and the tea was going to slosh out and cool off.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, the Founders created a Senate giving large and small states equal representation. The idea was for the upper chamber to act as a stately bulwark against the more uncouth ideas that could bubble up from the rabble and its representatives in the lower chamber. In the words of James Madison, the Senate\u2019s undemocratic structure was designed as a \u201cnecessary fence\u201d against \u201cthe impulse of sudden and violent passions\u201d of the people.<\/p>\n