When next Republicans gain a majority in the Senate

[Tom Rinaldo]

What do you figure the odds are that they will allow the filibuster to continue to exist if Democrats attempt to use it to thwart their agenda?

[Clio the Leo]

1. They'll be in the same spot we're in now....

..... even if they held the majority for 20 years they wont hold it FOREVER and no one wants to be in a position where they cant use it.

That's why it's survived all this time.

[dmallind]

2. True dat. They threatened nuclear option several times. Never pulled the trigger. NT

[Freddie Stubbs]

3. They threatened to do that over nominations, not legislation

[dmallind]

5. True, but the effect is the same. NT

[niceypoo]

4. Republicans are never in the same spot we are in

They aren't afraid to ram something through. Look how they passed Medicare plan D.

The political process used to pass Part D was the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress. In the months before its passage, a few powerful Republican leaders worked to undermine conscientious reform proposals. In early 2003, while the House bill was being drafted, Democrats and Republicans authored 59 sensible amendments to it. At the behest of the Republican leadership, however, the House Committee on Rules rejected all but one, preventing them from being debated by Congress. Many of those amendments — among them, one requiring the administration to use beneficiaries' collective purchasing power to negotiate lower prices and one allowing Americans to import cheaper drugs from Canada — would have made the legislation far more effective and probably would have received bipartisan support, had they been allowed onto the floor.

Next, the conference process, whereby the House and Senate versions of legislation are reconciled, was fundamentally corrupted and kept almost entirely secret by senior Republicans. Democrats on the conference committee were excluded from deliberations, to the point of being physically barred from the conference room on one occasion. The pharmaceutical industry, however, was invited in.

...

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/22/2314

Democrats are timid and submissive, that is why the walking stick we wanted has been whittled down to a tooth pick.

[iceman66]

6. They won't need to get rid of the fillibuster.

Whenever Republicans have been in control, they have never failed to peel off enough 'Democrats' to support whatever horrible legislation they are trying to pass.

If the Democrats were as unified during the Bush administration as the Republicans are now, most of Bush's agenda could have been thwarted and the country would be in a much better place right now.

The ONLY thing the Democrats threatened to fillibuster was a handful of judges, and they ended up caving on all but a few of those when faced with the 'nuclear option'.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. If they hadn't used reconciliation they would have needed to break a filibuster

...to get Bush's tax cuts for the rich through. But your point is taken. They do whatever they have to do. Unlike Democrats who are still hoping to play ball by 1989 standards.

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. Keep this in mind, those who like the safeguards contained in this HCR

Should Republicans gain their 50 seats and a President, what happens next if: new conservative Administrators replace those appointed by Obama to oversee the insurance industry (that just takes a Republican President). In the name of "cost containment" to control the runaway deficits "caused by entitlement programs we can't afford" many progressive components of this legislation are stripped away leaving the worst parts intact and the best parts compromised by new loopholes, and we unlike them won't be able to filibuster to stop those changes?