When the Democrats were filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees to the federal court of appeals, an unprecedented tactic by the way, it was the Democrats who were arguing that the filibuster was an important check on majority rule and it was the Republicans who were considering the Constitutional Option of bypassing the current Senate Rule regarding cloture for rules changes and forcing up or down votes on Bush’s judicial nominees.

So, the filibuster seems great when you are in the minority and lousy when you are in the majority.

Overall, I would prefer than the senate change its rules to one containing a 51/100ths of all Senators chosen and sworn from our current 3/5ths of all Senators chosen and sworn.

There’s really no point in having elections if the people who lose the election can prevent the winners from governing, in my opinion.

That said, I hope the Republicans filibuster this health care like there’s no tommorrow, just as the Democrats filibustered Bush’s judicial nominees to the federal court of appeals like there was no tommorrow.

Not really. All it takes is a simple majority to change senate procedure, while leaving the rules unchanged.

You see. It is the full Senate that interprets and enforces Senate rules. So, whenever a majority of Senators and the Presiding officer of the Senate want to ignore a Senate Rule, they can.

Ready my recent diary titled: Junk the filibuster, but only once the GOP wins the majority back.

I discuss, briefly, how Senate rules and/or Senate procedures have been changed in the past by a simple majority vote.

Pulling a Kowalski here…..

The Democrats can ignore, bypass, overrule or change the filibuster tactic at any time with a simple majority vote.

But they probably won’t do it for the same reason that such changes in Senate procedure/rules are rare: Senators feel bound by tradition. So, they don’t like going around the rules or changing them based on a single piece of Senate business.

Sure, for the Democrats and the Left, health care might be important enough to them for them to use the Byrd option (or Constitutional Option as the GOP called it back in 2005 when they were trying to stop the Democrats’ filibustering of Bush’s judicial nominees to the federal court of appeals).

But right now, moderate Democrats are running scared in the aftermath of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts and the Democrats don’t even know, even if they did use the Byrd option, what compromise legislation that they would actually want to pass, given that there is a difference between the legislation passed by the US House and the US Senate.

So, I think many on the Left will demand that the Senate bypass the 60 vote requirement and the Senate will be unable to muster the will and the political recklessness to do so.