Don’t do it, Harry! Don’t do it! You’ll regret it! Why, we might turn around and cram the courts full of Scalias and Thomases and. . .
Wait, what’s that you say? That that’s what we did, anyway? Weelllll, we’ll just. . .
BOOM!
~~~
Dave Weigel has some really nice observations at Slate, noting in particular that
They didn’t demand the change because they’re ignorant about the 2014 polls. If they lose that election, they’ll have given themselves a year to confirm judges and executive nominees. If they lose the presidency in 2016, they’ll have empowered a Republican to put judicial robes on whichever Federalist Society member he wants. But they expected Republicans to break the filibuster anyway. “I know that if there is a Republican president and a Republican majority,” Sen. Merkley said this month, “they will force up-and-down votes, because they demonstrated their commitment to that principle in 2005.”
Merkley’s opponents never really reckoned with his logic. Progressives did not consider filibuster reform a “risk.” They saw a way to kick over an impediment to majority rule, before Republicans took power and kicked it over themselves. They’re trading something that might have brought “consensus” for something that empowers the party that wins elections. And they’re fine with that.
Just so.
AbsurdBeats 
It’s my growing sense that the more diverse/representative and on display, (even interactive with the publics) our government has become the more fractured and ineffective it has become.
http://www.newappsblog.com/2013/11/filibusters-and-the-fetishizing-of-procedures.html
Why, you Schmittian, you!
that’s Lippmanniac to you madam