On November 21, 2013, the Senate democrats and Majority Leader Harry Reid exercised the “nuclear option” to kill the filibuster rights afforded to protect against the tyranny of the majority and total dominant-party rule. The 52-48 vote (in a Senate with a 55-45 democrat majority) overturned the 235-year tradition requiring a 60-vote majority for most presidential nominees.

Less than a decade ago, Senate Majority Leader Reid strongly objected to the exact same vote to kill the filibuster when Congress threatened to change the rules to allow President Bush to confirm judicial appointment and said that invoking the nuclear option would usher in a “black chapter in the history of the Senate.” In 2005, Senator Barack Obama agreed and argued:

[Neither Party should] change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet…the bitterness and gridlock will only get worse.

Senator Joe Biden was also in agreement with Reid and Obama.  In response to the Republican Senate majority in 2005 when they threatened to use a similar “nuclear option” he stated:

The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play . . . tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field. I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

During President Bush’s term, Democrats exercised the filibuster on several occasions in order to check against Republican nominees who were too “extreme” including Priscilla Owens, Charles Pickering, and William Pryor.  So then why is it permissible now, when the tables are turned and the democrats hold a majority, to suddenly remove the Republicans’ check against extremism on the left?  It’s not.  Both parties should have the right now and in the future to check against extremism and majority rule.

The removal of the Filibuster has troubling ramifications.  First, it opens Pandora’s box to further changes in the rules.  There is nothing preventing a majority and all future majorities from exercising the same power on anything ranging from judges and executive appointments to legislation.  If Republicans were to win the majority in the next election, the democrats will suddenly be on the other side of the fence and will have eliminated a powerful tool in their toolbox.  This is precisely what John Adams, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill were referring to when they used the phrase “tyranny of the majority.”  James Madison warned against the threat of the tyranny of the majority in Federalist Number 10 and cited this reason for why a republic is preferable to a pure democracy.  Eliminating the filibuster moves us away from Republic and closer on the spectrum to Democracy and to the mercy of “factions.”

Second, instead of decreasing polarization, eliminating the filibuster has furthered the problem and created serious backlash.  Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley stated, “If the Democrats are bent on changing the rules, go ahead.  There are a lot more Scalias and Thomases out there we’d love to put on the bench.”  As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post points out, Reid’s remedy has created a situation in which the minority leader is  expected to use the minority’s remaining powers to get revenge when the Republicans regain the majority.  2014 is the year of the next Congressional elections and if the Republicans win a majority, Obama’s prediction of gridlock will ring more true than ever.