Leave it to Slate writer (in this case Timothy Noah) to figure things out from a different perspective. Noah writes:
Why the Christian right would be nuts to eliminate the filibuster.
I stand with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in favoring elimination of the filibuster. As I explained in an earlier column (and elaborated in a radio debate with Slate editor Jacob Weisberg), the filibuster is anti-democratic because it thwarts the will of the Senate majority by routinely requiring a 60-vote supermajority to bring legislation and nominations to the Senate floor. This is more or less what Frist said in yesterday's "Justice Sunday" speech, which Christian conservatives broadcast yesterday to hundreds of like-minded churches. (To watch the video, click here.) "I don't think it's radical to ask senators to vote," Frist said. Frist isn't willing to extend the "simple majority rules" principle beyond judicial nominations, but it's entirely logical to do so, and if Frist succeeds it will only be a matter of time before the filibuster is eliminated for legislation, too. I'm all for it.
What I can't figure out is why the Christian right is for it, too. "This simulcast would not be necessary if the Senate's most liberal members would distance themselves from the interest groups that hold them in thrall," says an April 23 statement by Tony Perkins, president of FRC Action, the Family Research Council's lobbying arm. But if any special-interest group is playing a role in the battle over Bush's judicial nominations, it's the Christian right itself. The Christers' failure to recognize that their policies appeal only to a minority of the electorate has led them to favor a Senate rule change that would damage their interests severely over the long term.
Support for the filibuster, remember, is premised on the idea that the government shouldn't be susceptible to the tyranny of the majority. But I find very little evidence to support the idea that majority opinion in the United States is particularly tyrannical. The real problem in American politics, if you ask me, is the tyranny of the minority—or rather, of a variety of different minorities, known collectively as interest groups, which use a variety of means (including the filibuster) to exert power beyond their number. That's true going back to the origins of the republic, when a minority of slaveholders in the South managed to exert their will over the rest of the country. Today, the most powerful interest group, or at least the most obnoxious, is the Christian right.
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