Of course, this whining is just more sour-grapes entitlement from the party that does not like being told it can't have its way.
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). As corrupt as the day is long.
image from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44888.html
But it's also more than that. If McConnell is not careful, he will bring an end to the filibuster entirely, because the whole concept does not stand much scrutiny. In fact, I believe that it is probably contrary to the spirit and and letter of the US Constitution, though no direct challenge to it is possible.
Article I section 5 allows each house of Congress to set its own procedures of deliberation. In the Senate, which fancies itself a gentleman's club, members defer to each other's desire to continue debate on a subject indefinitely. As long as someone wants to keep talking, we should allow him to do so. The practical effect of the rule is to prevent a vote on the matter at hand and to stop the Senate from doing any business at all unless the speaker agrees to sit down. (It is notable that this rule originated from Aaron Burr, famous primarily for his incessant manipulation of "gentleman's" rules for his own benefit, to the extent that he killed Alexander Hamilton and tried to organize a coup to make him King of the United States.) A filibuster is the deliberate use of this rule to obstruct the proceedings of the Senate, and can represent an important tool for a minority to prevent the majority from railroading a bill through.
Without question, the role of the Senate in the US system of government is to slow down the action of majorities. In contrast to the House of Representatives, the Senate is not especially democratic: it's elections occur less frequently, its members are fewer in number and are unattached to any specific district within a state, and under the original constitution were not elected directly. In this context, the filibuster makes sense as an extension of the spirit of the body.
But even under more recent Senate rules, which allow for cloture (the ending of debate) with a vote of 60 members, the filibuster runs counter to some of the most fundamental rule of the Constitution. Articles I, II and V outline very specific applications of majority and super-majority votes. The Constitution explicitly overturned the system of the Articles of Confederation, in which super-majorities were the norm in the national legislature, but direct majority votes ruled all elections. Article I section 7 describes in detail the ways in which a bill is to become a law, and only when both houses wish to overturn a presidential veto is a super-majority necessary. Under current rules, major legislation effectively requires 60 votes from the Senate rather than the 51 that would be required for a simple majority.I believe it therefore undercuts the essential system of government laid out in the founding document.
Especially as the rule has been applied recently, so that an obstructionist need not even speak, but can simply express his wish to stop a vote, the filibuster is dramatically un-democratic even in the context of the Senate. It has stopped the normal functioning of the government for years, and has thwarted the popular will even more than was intended for the Senate to do.
McConnell may want the Senate to remain that way, because he sees the writing on the wall: he and his ilk can not muster the support of the majority of Americans, and the trend is only moving farther away from him. He may want to maintain his privilege, and probably figures he's entitled to it, just as he thinks he's entitled to get whatever he wants all the time. But he might not want to make it so public. With a little luck, people will catch on.
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