Maybe the Republicans actually believe that the Democrats are a dad party that will never again challenge for majority rule. Why else would they forget how much they loved the filibuster?
The days were as dark for Republicans then as they are for Democrats today.
Bill Clinton had defied the odds and his scandalous reputation to unseat an incumbent Republican president. Worse still, the Democrats had gained control of both houses of Congress.
I remember seeing Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the GOP minority leader, interviewed soon after the 1992 election. He was dour and trying to salvage some kind of hope for his party out of the stunning results. All he could cling to, really, was that it took 60 votes to get just about anything done in the Senate, and his party would have the power to stop most legislation.
Asked about using the filibuster, Dole mentioned specifically the Workplace Fairness Act.
This bill was everything Democrats dreamed of, and all that Republicans loathed. It was a sop to organized labor, giving workers the right to strike without fear of being permanently replaced. It held out the possibility of greatly strengthening labor's hand and perhaps reversing its decline within private-sector workplaces.
In the labor vs. capital equation, the GOP believed at its core that the way to strengthen the economy was to tip the balance in favor of Capital, aka, employers. Moreover, the Workplace Fairness Act would add considerable muscle to the Democratic base.
On June 15, 1993, it passed the U.S. House 239-190. In the Senate, 53 of the 100 senators favored it. But it didn't become law because Senate rules said it took 60 votes to end debate and force a final vote on the bill. The Workplace Fairness Act died, and Labor's long, slow decline has continued, much to the delight of the GOP.
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